WHEN   RAILROADS 
WERE   NEW 

BY 

CHARLES  FREDERICK   CARTER    1 


WITH    INTRODUCTORY    NOTE 
BY 

LOGAN  G.  McPHERSON 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
LONDON:  GEORGE  BELL  AND  SONS 

1909 


HE 


COPYRIGHT,  1909, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published  March,  1909 


THE   QUINN    &   BODEN    CO.    PRESS 
RAH  WAY,    N.   J. 


TO 
O  A.  D.   SMITH 

5     BEST  OF  ENGINEERS  AND  MOST  FAITHFUL  OF  FRIENDS, 

IN  MEMORY  OF  THE  GOOD  OLD  DAYS  WHEN 
J  WE  RAILROADED  TOGETHER  ON  THE 

O  NEBRASKA  DIVISION,  THIS 

O  VOLUME  IS  INSCRIBED 

or 
O 


PREFACE 

CONCERNING  certain  aspects  of  the  railroad,  such  as 
its  finance,  both  high  and  ordinary,  its  construction 
and  operation  from  a  technical  viewpoint,  its  moral 
turpitude  and  its  predilection  for  manslaughter,  whole 
libraries  have  been  published.  The  fact  that  more 
libraries  are  constantly  being  added  indicates  a  sus- 
tained interest  in  the  subject  which  is  not  at  all  sur- 
prising, considering  how  intimately  the  railroad  enters 
into  the  life  of  everybody,  from  the  hosts  who  look 
directly  to  it  for  their  bread,  to  the  farmer  and  the 
manufacturer  whose  products  it  takes  to  market,  the 
baby  who  depends  upon  it  to  bring  the  daily  supply 
for  his  bottle,  and  the  millionaire  who  expects  it  to 
furnish  him  an  income. 

What  is  surprising  is  that  the  general  reader  might 
search  in  vain  throughout  the  wilderness  of  words  for 
any  satisfactory  account  of  how  the  railroad  came  to 
America;  of  how  Smith  and  Jones  and  Robinson 
quarreled  first  about  what  a  railroad  was,  then  about 
its  desirability,  then  about  how  to  build  and  run  it; 
how  they  struggled  with  poverty,  ignorance,  and  other 
inevitable  obstacles,  blundered  and  struggled  on  again 
until  they  had  at  last  developed  a  method  of  transpor- 
tation that,  measured  by  its  influence  in  accelerating 
the  march  of  Progress,  is  the  greatest  achievement  in 
the  annals  of  the  race. 

Such  human-interest  stories  of  the  railroad  as  have 
been  preserved  are  but  disjointed  fragments  consti- 


vi  PREFACE 

tuting  a  delirium  of  contradictions.  It  seems  as  if 
every  statement  ever  made  about  the  history  of  the 
railroad  by  any  one  has  been  disputed  by  some  one 
else.  For  example,  the  honor  of  inventing  the  link 
motion  of  the  locomotive  is  claimed  for  three  different 
men.  The  invention  of  the  four-wheeled  truck  is  also 
claimed  for  three  men.  One  of  them  obtained  a  pat- 
ent for  the  device,  then  spent  a  fortune  trying  to  pro- 
tect it  only  to  find  out  that  he  was  not  entitled  to  it. 

The  man  who  made  the  first  trip  on  a  locomotive 
in  America  gives  a  date  for  the  event  that  contem- 
poraneous data  proves  to  be  wrong. 

The  management  of  the  greatest  locomotive  works 
in  the  world  asserts  that  the  first  engine  built  by  their 
founder  ran  only  on  fair  days  at  the  outset  of  its 
career,  being  replaced  by  horses  on  rainy  days  by  its 
proud  but  prudent  owners.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
engineer  who  claims  to  have  had  charge  of  this  first 
locomotive  declares  he  ran  it  every  day,  rain  or  shine. 

Dates  that  vary  a  whole  year  are  given  for  so  re- 
cent an  event  as  the  running  of  the  first  through  pas- 
senger train  over  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway. 

A  former  auditor  of  the  Lake  Shore  in  attempting 
to  give  the  date  of  the  Ashtabula  wreck,  in  a  historical 
paper  presumably  prepared  with  care,  errs  regarding 
the  day  of  the  month,  the  month,  and  the  year.  Yet 
auditors  are  popularly  supposed  to  be  the  most  dis- 
tressingly accurate  of  men.  Even  this  was  outdone 
by  a  minister,  who  achieved  the  truly  remarkable  feat 
of  writing  a  book  about  the  same  wreck  without  dis- 
closing the  date  thereof  or  the  number  killed  and  in- 
jured therein. 

In  this  volume  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  gather 


PREFACE  vii 

the  floating  fragments  of  railroad  history  having  a 
human  interest  into  a  coherent  narrative  of  the  work- 
a-day  trials  and  triumphs  of  the  pioneers  in  the  plan- 
ning and  the  building  of  the  railroad  that  would  be 
neither  a  dry  historical  treatise  nor  a  collection  of 
anecdotes.  It  is  not  designed  to  be  comprehensive 
in  the  sense  of  including  details  of  all  the  early  rail- 
roads, or  even  of  all  the  important  ones  that  have  sur- 
vived; for  such  a  work  would  be  as  wearisome  as  it 
would  be  profitless.  It  is  hoped,  however,  that  it  is 
sufficiently  comprehensive  to  present  a  homely  picture 
of  the  development  of  the  railroad  in  America  under 
various  representative  types  of  conditions. 

Much  of  the  material  was  published  in  a  series  of 
articles  in  the  Railroad  Man's  Magazine  by  the  Frank 
A.  Munsey  Company,  New  York,  through  whose 
courtesy  it  is  reproduced  here. 

C.  F.  C. 

NEW  YOBK,  March  2,  1908. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

INTRODUCTION .       .       .     xiii 

I.     THE  DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA       ......        1 

II.     AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  .        .       .  '     .       >       .       .       .       33 

III.  EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE       ..     w.       .....       75 

IV.  PENNSYLVANIA  AND  THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  .       .       .111 
V.     GENESIS  or  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM  ...       .       .       .     150 

VI.     INCUBATOR    RAILROADS      .       .       .....       ,       .       .  186 

VII.     THE  FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD 226 

VIII.     THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL   ..'.....  259 

IX.     ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD  .        .       .       .       .       .       ,  284 

INDEX  313 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

CHILDHOOD  OF  RAPID  TRANSIT,  1835-1836.  THE  NEW  YORK  CENTRAL 
ON  THE  MOHAWK.  SHOWING  THE  ERIE  CANAL  NEAR  LITTLE 
FALLS frontispiece 

THE  "  STOURBRIDGE  LION,"  THE  FIRST  LOCOMOTIVE  THAT  EVER  TURNED 

A  WHEEL  ON  AMERICAN  SOIL 20 

THE  "  BEST  FRIEND  OF  CHARLESTON,"  THE  FIRST  LOCOMOTIVE  BUILT 
IN  AMERICA,  DRAWN  TO  THE  SAME  SCALE  AS  THE  LARGEST  EVER 
BUILT,  A  MALLET  ARTICULATED  COMPOUND  ENGINE  WEIGHING 
410,000  POUNDS 24 

THE  "  WEST  POINT,"  THE  SECOND  LOCOMOTIVE  BUILT  IN  AMERICA  .       .       26 

THE  "  TOM  THUMB,"  PETER  COOPER'S  WORKING  MODEL  OF  A  LOCO- 
MOTIVE   46 

THE  "  YORK,"  BUILT  BY  PHINEAS  DAVIS,  WHICH  WON  THE  PRIZE 
OF  $4,000  OFFERED  BY  THE  BALTIMORE  AND  OHIO  RAILROAD  IN 

1831  FOR  THE  BEST  LOCOMOTIVE 49 

TYPE  OF  PASSENGER  CAR  USED  ON  THE  BALTIMORE  AND  OHIO  IN  1829  .       52 

TYPE  OF  "  BURDEN,"  OR  FREIGHT  CAR  USED  ON  THE  BALTIMORE  AND 

OHIO  IN  1832 52 

THE  FIRST  "  CAMEL,"  BUILT  BY  ROSS  WlNANS,  A  TYPE  OF  LOCOMOTIVE 
THAT  PLAYED  A  CONSPICUOUS  PART  IN  THE  EARLY  SUCCESS  OF  THE 
BALTIMORE  AND  OHIO 61 

"  OLD  IRONSIDES/'  THE  FAMOUS  FIRST  LOCOMOTIVE  BUILT  BY  M.  W. 
BALDWIN,  FOUNDER  OF  THE  GREATEST  LOCOMOTIVE  WORKS  IN  THE 
WORLD 116 

THE  "  WASHINGTON/'  NORRIS'  FAMOUS  ENGINE,  WHICH  IN  1836 
CREATED  A  TREMENDOUS  SENSATION  BY  SHOWING  THAT  LOCOMOTIVES 

COULD   RUN    UP   GRADE 128 

THE  "  JOHN  BULL,"  BUILT  IN  1831,  AND  COACHES,  BUILT  IN  1836  .       .     140 

By  courtesy  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 

xi 


xii  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

THE  "  DE  WITT  CLINTON  "  AND  TRAIN,  THE  FIRST  TRAIN  IN  THE  STATE 
or    NEW    YORK.      OPERATED    IN    1831    BETWEEN    ALBANY    AND 

SCHENECTADY '.  .  .       151 

From  a  photograph  at  the  World's  Columbian  Exposition  in 

1893.     By  courtesy  of  the  New  York  Central  Railroad 
THE    "  PIONEER,"   A    SECOND-HAND   BARGAIN    PURCHASED    ON    CREDIT 
IN  1848  BY  A  COMPANY  THAT  AFTERWARD  BECAME  PART  OF  THE 
CHICAGO  AND  NORTHWESTERN  RAILWAY.     IT  WAS  THE  FIRST  TO 

RUN  WEST  OF  CHICAGO 199 

THE  "  SANDUSKY,"  THE  FIRST  LOCOMOTIVE  WITH  A  WHISTLE,  WHICH 

FIXED  THE  GAUGE  FOR  EARLY  OHIO  RAILROADS 221 

THE  ROYAL  GORGE,  FOR  POSSESSION  OF  WHICH  THE  Rio  GRANDE  WAR 

WAS   WAGED 274 

By  courtesy  of  the  Denver  and  Rio  Grande  Railroad 
DRIVING  THE  LAST  SPIKE  ON  THE   CANADIAN   PACIFIC  AT  CRAIGEL- 

LACHIE,  B.  C.,  AT  9 :30  A.M.,  NOVEMBER  7,  1885       .       ,       .       .284 
By  courtesy  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

BY  LOGAN  G.  McPHERSON 

Author  of  "The  Working  of  the  Railroads";  Lecturer  on  Trans- 
portation at  Johns  Hopkins  University 

OF  the  mechanical  phases  of  the  early  railroads 
there  is  record  sufficient  to  picture  to  the  mind  the 
first  embankments,  with  the  crude  rails  laid  on  stone 
sills,  the  queer  looking  locomotives  with  their  per- 
pendicular boilers ;  and  of  the  financial  phase  we  may 
also  learn,  if  we  choose  to  dig  into  scattered  and 
buried  archives,  something  of  the  millions  and  mil- 
lions of  dollars  that  were  lost  in  experiments  when  a 
railroad  was  completed  only  to  be  constructed  anew; 
and  of  the  following  decades  when  the  American  peo- 
ple with  belligerent  haste  built  railroads  that,  though 
serving  the  main  purpose  of  developing  the  country, 
nearly  always  swamped  the  fortunes  of  their  pro- 
jectors. 

Of  the  human  element,  the  record  is  little  enough. 
The  building  of  a  railroad  at  this  present  day  is  an 
achievement,  notwithstanding  that  there  are  bases  for 
estimating  the  cost  of  construction  and  equipment 
which  will  be  of  tested  design,  and  the  traffic  that 
will  come  to  it  may  be  fairly  well  predicted.  Eighty 
years  ago  there  was  no  such  guide.  The  struggles 
of  the  men  who  built  the  first  railroads  were  as  those 
of  Titans,  and  the  detail  of  their  struggles  is  even 
now  almost  lost  in  Titanic  mists.  The  incidents  that 
Mr.  Carter  has  collected  and  here  clearly  set  forth 

xiii 


xiv  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

have  for  me  now  all  the  fascination  that  a  book  of 
adventure  had  in  my  boyhood. 

Then,  again,  while  engineers  know  well  enough  the 
steps  through  which  rails  were  wrought  to  their  pres- 
ent strength,  and  locomotives  to  their  present  power, 
there  is  little  of  the  record  of  that  impact  of  mind 
upon  mind  and  of  mind  upon  environment  which  has 
wrought  the  custom  and  usage  of  a  new  factor  in  the 
social  organism.  Of  the  beginnings  of  much  of  this 
Mr.  Carter  here  tells  us,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
he  will  find  more  to  tell  us  hereafter. 

'  When  Railroads  Were  New  "  certainly  will  ap- 
peal to  railroad  men,  and  ought  to  be  welcomed  by  the 
"  reading  public."  Because  of  the  information  not 
heretofore  collected,  and  the  information  not  hereto- 
fore presented,  as  well  as  because  of  the  way  it  is  pre- 
sented, the  book  certainly  deserves  to  reach  the  shelves 
of  the  public  libraries,  and  of  the  schools  and  colleges. 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA 

ONE  of  the  cardinal  grievances  of  the  Israelites 
in  bondage  was  that  they  were  obliged  to  make 
bricks  without  straw.  Yet  brickmaking  as  then  prac- 
tised was  a  craft  demanding  only  rudimentary  intelli- 
gence and  skill.  A  limitless  supply  of  raw  material 
free  of  cost  was  right  at  hand,  while  the  finished  prod- 
uct which  fulfilled  the  requirements  of  that  primitive 
day  was  so  hopelessly  inferior  that  it  could  not  have 
been  redeemed  even  by  the  addition  of  straw. 

If  those  discontented  bondmen  could  make  so  small 
a  matter  the  subject  of  a  protest  which  has  passed 
into  a  proverb  for  later  generations,  what  would  they 
have  done  if  they  had  been  called  upon  in  the  second 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  lay  the  founda- 
tions of  the  great  railroad  systems  of  the  United 
States  without  the  technical  training  needed  to  solve 
the  profound  engineering  problems  involved,  without 
material  to  work  with  or  money  or  credit  to  buy  it, 
and  even  without  a  remote  conception  of  what  a  rail- 
road should  be  ? 

It  was  under  precisely  these  conditions  that  the  first 
railroads  were  built  in  America.  Our  grandfathers 
tried  to  borrow  a  few  ideas  from  the  English  at  first, 
but  the  attempts  were  so  discouraging  that  they  were 
quickly  discontinued.  Of  the  first  four  locomotives 
imported  from  England  only  one  ever  made  so  much 


2  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

as  a  trial  trip,  which  was  never  repeated;  the  others 
were  so  lightly  esteemed  that  they  were  never  per- 
mitted to  turn  a  wheel,  but  soon  disappeared  so  utterly 
that  no  man  knows  what  became  of  them. 

The  Baltimore  and  Ohio,  the  first  important  rail- 
road, which  cost  $31,000,000  by  the  time  the  rails 
reached  the  Ohio  River,  was  begun  by  the  people  of 
Baltimore  when  all  the  earthly  possessions  of  the 
entire  city  were  worth  barely  $25,000,000.  The  pro- 
moters of  the  enterprise  were  so  ignorant  of  the  nature 
of  their  undertaking  that  they  had  to  appoint  a  com- 
mittee to  go  and  find  out  what  a  railroad  was  before 
beginning  operations. 

In  spite  of  all  these  difficulties  those  sturdy  pioneers 
wrought  cheerfully  on,  the  only  complaint  they  ever 
uttered  being  on  account  of  their  inability  to  build 
more  railroads.  Their  disappointment  in  this  respect 
was  providential  for  their  descendants;  for  if  all  the 
railroads  ever  projected  had  been  built  there  would 
have  been  no  room  on  this  continent  for  anything 
else. 

It  would  be  difficult,  indeed,  to  overestimate  the 
transcendent  importance  of  the  part  the  railroad  has 
played  in  making  the  Nation  what  it  is  to-day.  Per- 
haps it  would  be  within  bounds  to  say  that  without 
railroads  to  bind  the  States  into  one  homogeneous 
whole,  the  Nation  never  could  have  attained  its  pres- 
ent size  and  importance.  But  however  exalted  a  place 
in  the  march  of  progress  be  accorded  the  railroad,  no 
achievement  that  can  be  attributed  to  it  is  nearly  as 
wonderful  as  the  fact  that  the  railroad  itself  was 
evolved  from  such  seemingly  impossible  conditions. 

Difficult  as  it  is  to  realize,  it  is  only  eighty  years 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  3 

since  the  charter  for  the  first  railroad  in  America  was 
drafted.  Only  fifty-six  years  had  then  elapsed  since 
Watt  had  patented  his  steam  engine,  and  only  forty 
years  since  the  astounded  legislature  of  Pennsylvania 
had  silently  ignored  the  request  of  Oliver  Evans  for 
a  patent  on  a  steam  wagon,  as  the  hallucination  of  a 
disordered  mind.  Progress  in  engine  building  had 
been  so  slow  that  twenty-seven  years  before  that  pio- 
neer railroad  company  was  organized  the  Philadelphia 
waterworks  were  operated  by  a  wooden  boiler  supply- 
ing steam  at  two  and  a  half  pounds  pressure  to  an 
engine  built  chiefly  of  wood  with  a  copper  cylinder  as 
large  as  a  good-sized  modern  boiler. 

In  a  nation  of  magnificent  distances  the  need  of 
transportation  became  urgent  at  an  early  period.  But 
attempts  to  supply  the  need  were  resisted,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  by  that  considerable  part  of  every  commu- 
nity which  is  forever  under  arms,  ready  at  a  moment's 
notice  to  defend  established  conditions  against  the 
encroachments  of  progress.  Even  a  stage  coach  on  a 
moderately  good  road  was  too  advanced  for  the  reac- 
tionaries. One  of  them  took  his  indignant  pen  in  hand 
to  write  to  an  Albany  paper  in  1823  that  he  had  lately 
noticed  with  surprise  the  reckless  speed  with  which  a 
journey  was  made  in  a  stage  from  Utica  to  Albany 
and  return,  the  distance  of  two  hundred  miles  being 
covered  in  seventeen  hours  and  twenty-eight  minutes. 
This  was  so  remarkable  a  feat  that  it  attracted  the 
attention  of  seven  citizens  of  Buffalo,  who  attempted 
to  beat  the  record  and  succeeded  in  covering  eighty 
miles  in  six  hours  and  twenty-six  and  a  half  minutes. 

"  Why  the  necessity  for  this  waste  of  horse  flesh?  " 
demands  the  letter  writer.  "  Of  traveling  nearly 


4  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

thirteen  miles  an  hour  on  a  party  of  pleasure  and  at 
every  moment  in  danger  of  running  afoul  of  other  car- 
riages on  the  road?  " 

Despite  all  protests,  means  of  communication  were 
steadily  improved  until  in  1811  there  were  37,000 
miles  of  post  roads  in  the  United  States,  including 
the  great  National  turnpike,  begun  in  1806  and 
built  from  Cumberland,  Md.,  to  Steubenville,  O., 
at  a  cost  of  $1,800,000,  and  afterward  extended  to 
Indianapolis.  States  followed  the  example  of  the 
National  Government  by  appropriating  money  for 
highways,  while  turnpike  and  plank  road  corporations 
were  financed  by  private  capital.  In  time  it  became 
possible  to  travel  from  Boston  to  New  York,  a  dis- 
tance of  270  miles,  in  twenty-five  and  a  half  hours; 
and  from  Baltimore  to  Louisville  by  stage  and  steam- 
boat in  six  days  and  eight  hours,  including  twenty 
hours'  detention  at  various  places. 

But  a  freight  tariff  based  on  a  rate  of  a  hundred 
dollars  a  ton  between  Albany  and  Buffalo  was  not  cal- 
culated to  foster  trade.  When  the  necessities  of  traf- 
fic became  so  urgent  that  they  could  no  longer  be  dis- 
regarded the  people  at  last  turned  their  attention  to 
the  building  of  canals  as  a  source  of  relief.  Wash- 
ington, while  surveying  in  his  younger  days,  had  be- 
come deeply  impressed  with  the  possibilities  of  a  sys- 
tem of  canals  and  turnpikes  to  connect  the  waters  of 
the  Potomac  with  those  of  the  Ohio,  and  the  scheme 
was  always  a  favorite  with  him.  General  Philip 
Schuyler,  of  Albany,  who  went  to  England  in  1761  to 
settle  the  accounts  of  General  John  Bradstreet,  was 
greatly  impressed  by  the  Bridgewater  Canal,  then  just 
opened.  On  his  return  to  America  he  was  the  first  to 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  5 

propose  a  canal  to  connect  Lake  Champlain  with  the 
Hudson.  In  1762  some  citizens  of  Pennsylvania 
applied  to  the  legislature  for  a  charter  for  the  Schuyl- 
kill  and  Susquehanna  Canal  to  connect  the  rivers  of 
those  names.  This  canal,  four  miles  long,  finished 
and  operated  in  1794,  was  the  first  projected  and  the 
first  chartered,  while  the  South  Hadley  and  Mon- 
tague Canal,  five  miles  long,  around  the  rapids  of  the 
Connecticut  River  at  South  Hadley,  Mass.,  opened 
in  1792,  was  the  first  operated  in  the  United  States. 

After  a  conference  with  Washington  on  the  subject 
of  canals,  Elkanah  Watson  made  some  explorations 
in  1788  which  convinced  him  that  a  water  route  by 
way  of  the  Mohawk  River  and  a  canal  to  Lake  Onta- 
rio was  feasible.  By  four  years  of  hard  work  Wat- 
son, Schuyler,  and  a  few  other  enthusiasts  wrought 
public  opinion  up  to  a  point  which  enabled  them  to 
secure  from  the  New  York  legislature  charters  for 
two  canals.  From  one  of  these  schemes  the  Erie 
Canal  was  ultimately  evolved. 

The  sentiment  in  favor  of  canals  thus  started  spread 
gradually  until  the  astonishing  results  accomplished 
by  the  Erie  Canal  fanned  it  into  a  furore.  Imme- 
diately all  sorts  of  possible  and  impossible  canal 
projects  were  advanced,  with  the  result  that  by  Jan- 
uary 1,  1835,  forty-eight  canals  aggregating  2,617 
miles  were  in  use.  At  the  climax  of  the  canal  period 
five  thousand  miles  of  these  artificial  waterways  cost- 
ing $150,000,000  were  in  operation.  Public  opinion, 
which  had  so  reluctantly  taken  this  step  in  advance, 
now  assumed  that  the  last  word  had  been  spoken  on 
the  subject  of  transportation;  that  the  canal  was  the 
apotheosis  of  engineering  skill. 


6  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

The  little  band  of  advanced  thinkers  which  accepted 
the  wonders  of  the  canal  with  mental  reservations,  and 
which  had  heard  with  eager  interest  of  Richard  Tre- 
vithick's  experiments  with  a  steam  locomotive  on  a 
tram  road  near  Merthyr-Tydvil,  in  Wales,  in  1804; 
of  Blackett's  locomotive,  modeled  after  Trevithick's 
nine  years  later;  of  Chapman's  endless  chain  locomo- 
tive, brought  out  about  the  same  time,  which  saw 
eighty  years'  continuous  service  before  it  earned  hon- 
orable retirement  to  a  museum  hall,  and  of  Stephen- 
son's  locomotive,  "  My  Lord,"  which  drew  nine  loaded 
wagons  up  a  twelve-foot  grade  on  the  Killingworth 
Colliery  road  in  1814,  therefore  had  not  only  to  over- 
come the  inertia  of  blind  opposition  to  all  progress, 
but  also  to  pry  popular  prejudice  out  of  a  settled  con- 
viction in  favor  of  artificial  waterways. 

Even  this  task  was  trifling  compared  with  the  Her- 
culean labor  of  converting  the  numerous  class  which 
simply  knew  that  railroads  could  not  be  built  nor  oper- 
ated if  they  were  built,  and  who  were,  therefore,  not 
open  to  conviction.  These  men  were  the  fathers  of 
the  statesmen  whose  witticisms,  inspired  by  S.  F.  B. 
Morse's  request  for  government  aid  to  demonstrate 
the  worth  of  that  fantastic  absurdity,  the  electric  tele- 
graph, are  embalmed  in  the  Congressional  Record, 
and  of  the  Chicago  bankers  who  told  the  promoter 
who  appeared  before  them  with  a  proposal  to  estab- 
lish one  of  Morse's  patent  telegraphs  connecting  that 
thriving  town  with  the  East,  intimating  that  in  time 
it  might  do  a  business  amounting  to  as  much  as  a 
hundred  dollars  a  day,  that  he  was  crazy,  and  ordered 
him  out  of  the  room.  Doubtless  the  ancestors  of  the 
influential  capitalists  who  thirty-five  years  later  jeered 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  7 

at  Alexander  Graham  Bell's  attempts  to  finance  a 
scheme  "  to  talk  through  a  wire,"  and  the  heroes  of 
many  other  exploits  of  a  similar  character  were  also 
represented. 

Colonel  John  Stevens,  of  Hoboken,  wore  his  life 
out  in  futile  attempts  to  convince  his  contemporaries 
that  railroads  were  the  only  satisfactory  solution  of 
the  transportation  problem.  Colonel  Stevens,  with 
a  grasp  of  the  question  wonderfully  clear  for  that  day, 
worked  out  a  plan  for  a  railroad  with  wooden  rails 
supported  on  piles  from  Albany  to  Lake  Erie,  which 
he  urged  the  National  Government  to  take  up.  In 
1812  Stevens  published  a  pamphlet  entitled  "  Docu- 
ments Tending  to  Prove  the  Superior  Advantages  of 
Railways  and  Steam  Carriages  over  Canal  Naviga- 
tion." He  could  see  nothing  to  hinder  steam  car- 
riages from  attaining  a  velocity  of  a  hundred  miles  an 
hour,  but  thought  that  in  practice  it  might  not  be 
convenient  to  exceed  twenty  to  thirty  miles  an  hour. 
But  Chancellor  Livingston  and  Gouverneur  Morris 
demonstrated  conclusively  that  a  railroad  under  any 
circumstances  was  impossible. 

About  the  same  time  Oliver  Evans,  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, "  The  Watt  of  America,"  inventor  of  the  high- 
pressure  steam  engine,  made  this  remarkable  pre- 
diction : 

"  The  time  will  come  when  people  will  travel  in  stages 
moved  by  steam  engines  from  one  city  to  another,  almost  as 
fast  as  birds  can  fly,  fifteen  or  twenty  miles  an  hour.  Pass- 
ing through  the  air  with  such  velocity  will  be  the  most  ex- 
hilarating exercise.  To  accomplish  this  two  sets  of  railways 
will  be  laid,  so  nearly  level  as  not  to  deviate  more  than  two 
degrees  from  the  horizontal,  made  of  wood  or  iron,  on  smooth 


8  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

paths  of  broken  stone  or  gravel,  with  a  rail  to  guide  the  car- 
riages so  they  may  pass  each  other  in  different  directions, 
and  they  will  travel  by  night  as  well  as  by  day.  Passengers 
will  sleep  in  these  stages  as  comfortably  as  they  now  do  in 
steam  stage  boats.  Twenty  miles  an  hour  is  about  thirty- 
two  feet  a  second,  and  the  resistance  of  the  air  about  one 
pound  to  the  square  foot;  but  the  body  of  the  carriages 
will  be  shaped  like  a  swift  swimming  fish  to  pass  easily 
through  the  air.  The  United  States  will  be  the  first  nation 
to  make  the  discovery,  and  her  wealth  and  power  will  rise  to 
an  unparalleled  height." 

Henry  Meigs,  a  member  of  the  New  York  legisla- 
ture in  1817,  a  young  man  of  fine  talents,  lost  his  in- 
fluence, ruined  his  prospects,  and  came  to  be  regarded 
as  a  proper  subject  for  a  strait- jacket  because  he 
expressed  his  belief  that  steam  carriages  would  be 
operated  successfully  on  land. 

The  most  embarrassing  feature  of  the  situation  was 
that  these  prominent  citizens  who  knew  railroads  were 
but  the  impracticable  dream  of  irresponsible  vision- 
aries, were  the  owners  of  what  little  capital  there  was 
in  the  country,  and  railroad  building  is  distinctly  an 
enterprise  requiring  funds.  The  character  and  extent 
of  this  opposition,  which  by  no  means  was  confined  to 
Massachusetts,  are  admirably  set  forth  in  this  extract 
from  a  speech  by  Henry  Williams,  a  director  of  the 
Boston  and  Worcester  Railroad,  at  the  celebration 
in  Worcester  of  the  opening  of  the  road  July  6,  1835: 

"A  few  years  ago  this  project  started.  It  had  many 
warm  and  high-spirited  friends  and  advocates;  also  many 
strong  and  powerful  enemies.  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  these 
enemies  were  to  be  found  principally  among  the  rich  and 
powerful — the  very  class  of  men  who  possessed  the  most 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  9 

ample  means,  and  so  might  have  been  expected  to  be  first  and 
foremost  in  advocating  and  prosecuting  an  important,  a 
noble  public  enterprise.  True,  there  were  honorable  excep- 
tions ;  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  very  many  great  men, 
very  many  rich  men,  refused  all  participation,  scoffed  at  our 
project,  pointed  at  some  of  us  the  finger  of  scorn  and  bandied 
such  epithets  as  '  hare-brained  enthusiasts,'  '  visionaries,'  who 
'  almost  deserve  to  be  sent  to  the  mad-house.' 

"  All  this  was  said — nay  more ;  for  when  the  first  spade 
was  stuck  in  the  ground  the  directors  were  called  '  fools,' 
'  idiots,'  and  '  knaves.'  They  were  declared  guilty  of  a  high 
crime  in  commencing  a  work  which  must  inevitably  result  in 
as  total  a  loss  as  if  the  money  expended  were  shoveled  into  the 
bottomless  pit. 

"  All  this  was  said  and  much  more.  Measures  were 
actually  taken  to  arrest  work  and  cause  an  abandonment  of 
the  enterprise.  But,  thanks  to  the  true  friends  of  the  proj- 
ect, they  stood  firm  and,  with  warm  hearts  and  just  confidence 
in  those  who  were  chosen  to  prosecute  the  work,  manfully  and 
successfully  resisted  all  attempts  to  crush  the  noble  project. 

"  The  road  had  a  sorry  beginning.  At  first  some  of  our 
prominent  men  were  willing  to  advance  a  few  dollars  to  make 
examinations  and  surveys ;  but  when  called  upon  to  take  and 
pay  for  the  stock  for  which  they  had  subscribed,  they  flinched 
and  vociferously  cried  out  that  it  was  madness  to  go  on ;  that 
the  road  would  cost  three  times  the  amount  of  the  estimates, 
and  that  even  if  it  should  be  built  it  would  be  next  to  worth- 
less and  could  never  pay  half  of  one  per  cent  on  the  cost. 

"  Here  we  are,  my  friends,  in  the  hall  of  the  heart  of  the 
Commonwealth.  We  came  by  railroad  all  the  way  from 
Boston,  forty-two  miles,  in  less  than  three  hours.  The  road 
is  finished,  but  who  accomplished  the  work?  Has  it  been 
done  by  the  rich  men,  the  great  men  of  the  times?  By  our 
quarter,  half,  and  whole  million  men?  No,  sir!  It  has  been 
accomplished  by  the  bone  and  sinew  of  the  community;  by 


10  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

the  middling  interest  people,  by  that  class  of  men  who  have 
warm  hearts,  clear  heads,  and  who  possess  almost  a  monopoly 
of  generous  public  spirit." 

Still  another  part  of  the  opposition  to  the  railroad 
was  made  up  of  a  class  which  was  unable  to  help,  hut 
which  was  able  to  hinder  materially  by  playing  upon 
unreasoning  prejudice.  Of  this  type  was  the  Eng- 
lishman who  in  1830  assumed  that  the  railroad  advo- 
cates planned  to  dispense  entirely  with  horses  and 
drivers.  He  figured  that  earning  power  valued  at  a 
hundred  million  pounds  a  year  would  be  thus  utterly 
destroyed.  What  was  to  hecome  of  all  the  people 
thus  deprived  of  a  livelihood? 

Another  Englishman,  a  scientist,  was  much  exer- 
cised over  the  doom  of  America  after  this  unfortunate 
country  had  fed  to  its  locomotives  the  last  pound  of 
its  limited  supply  of  coal. 

Still  another  summed  up  the  horrors  and  dangers  of 
railroad  travel  thus : 

"  Reader,  how  would  you  like  to  be  put  in  a  box  like  a 
coach  or  a  sedan  and  dropped  out  of  the  window  of  the  fifth 
or  sixth  flat  of  a  house?  Sixty-six  miles  an  hour  is  the 
highest  velocity  attained  by  falling  bodies  in  one  hundred 
feet,  and  forty-four  miles  an  hour  in  falling  sixty-four  feet. 
Even  supposing  that  means  were  found  to  abate  one-half  of 
the  violent  shock  in  stopping,  enough  remains  to  terrify  con- 
siderate men  from  risking  their  persons  in  such  species  of 
conveyance.  Till  we  have  bones  of  brass  or  iron,  or  better 
methods  of  protecting  them  than  we  have  now,  it  is  pre- 
posterous to  talk  of  traveling  fifty  or  sixty  miles  an  hour  as 
a  practicable  thing." 

Most  remarkable  of  all  was  the  discovery,  also  by 
an  English  genius,  of  a  new  disease  superinduced  by 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  11 

rapid  travel  on  the  railroad.  He  declared  that  it  was 
a  notorious  fact  that  the  brains  of  business  men  were 
so  addled  by  the  swiftness  of  the  journey  from  Man- 
chester to  Liverpool  or  London,  that  they  often  for- 
got what  they  went  for,  and  had  to  write  home  to  find 
out.  One  elderly  gentleman  became  so  impregnated 
with  velocity,  as  the  result  of  a  prolonged  debauch  in 
railroad  rides,  that  he  dashed  head  foremost  into  an 
iron  post  and  shivered  it  into  pieces,  according  to 
this  veracious  authority. 

All  these  remarkable  stories  were  duly  brought 
across  the  ocean,  to  be  gravely  discussed,  embellished, 
and  reconstructed  to  give  them  a  local  atmosphere, 
and  fed  to  the  credulous  to  rouse  their  apprehensions 
and  their  antipathies.  In  1836  the  people  of  New- 
ington,  Conn.,  drew  up  a  remonstrance  addressed  to 
the  directors  of  a  railroad  that  had  been  surveyed 
through  the  town,  setting  forth  that  they  were  a 
peaceable,  orderly  people,  and  that  they  did  not  want 
their  quiet  disturbed  by  steam  cars  and  the  influx  of 
strangers.  Dorchester,  Mass.,  in  town  meeting  as- 
sembled in  1842,  instructed  its  representatives  in  the 
legislature  to  "  use  their  utmost  endeavors  to  prevent, 
if  possible,  so  great  a  calamity  to  our  town  as  must 
be  the  location  of  any  railroad  through  it."  A  com- 
mittee of  Congress,  in  a  report  dated  February  21, 
1829,  expressed  the  conviction  that  clauses  in  charters 
prohibiting  any  one  but  the  owners  of  a  railroad  from 
using  it  "  seem  to  render  it  obnoxious  to  the  charge 
of  a  close  monopoly." 

But  once  a  great  idea  has  germinated  it  will  grow 
in  spite  of  all  the  powers  of  darkness.  The  theory  of 
the  railroad  was  so  sound  that  it  won  its  way  irresist- 


12  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

ibly.  When  at  last  the  Stockton  and  Darlington 
Railroad  of  England,  which  had  been  authorized  by 
Parliament  in  1821  after  desperate  opposition,  was 
opened  for  traffic  in  1825,  the  more  reckless  enthu- 
siasts on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  jumped  at  the  con- 
clusion that  a  new  era  of  transportation  had  dawned. 
Almost  simultaneously  advanced  thinkers  in  widely 
separated  parts  of  the  country,  each  in  his  own  way, 
set  about  the  development  of  the  American  railroad. 

One  of  the  first  Americans  to  form  a  definite  con- 
viction that  the  railroad  was  to  supply  the  transpor- 
tation of  the  future  was  Horatio  Allen,  the  son  of  a 
professor  of  mathematics  at  Union  College,  Schenec- 
tady,  who  had  adopted  engineering  as  a  profession. 
At  the  age  of  twenty-three  Allen  secured  an  appoint- 
ment as  resident  engineer  on  the  summit  level  of  the 
Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal  just  about  the  time 
the  Stockton  and  Darlington  Railroad  was  opened. 
Young  Allen  was  clever,  energetic,  and  ambitious. 
He  won  the  friendship  of  his  chief,  J.  B.  Jervis,  and 
he  had  the  best  possible  opportunity  for  advancement 
in  the  science  of  canal  building,  then  the  most  highly 
esteemed  form  of  internal  improvement. 

But  he  was  shrewd  enough  to  realize  that  his 
chances  of  a  career  lay  not  on  the  canal  but  on  the 
dawning  railroad.  So  he  resigned  his  position  in  1827 
and  prepared  to  go  to  England  to  study  railroad 
building  at  first  hand.  His  late  employers  had  such 
confidence  in  Allen  that  they  commissioned  him  to 
buy  the  iron  for  a  railroad  they  were  building  from 
Honesdale,  the  terminus  of  the  canal,  to  the  coal 
mines  at  Carbondale,  and  four  locomotives  to  operate 
it.  As  compensation  they  agreed  to  pay  his  expenses 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  13 

for  three  months,  but  not  to  exceed  nine  hundred  dol- 
lars, while  he  was  studying  railroads. 

About  the  time  that  Allen  gave  up  his  position  to 
go  to  England,  the  first  railroad  in  the  United  States 
was  completed.  It  was  built  by  Gridley  Bryant, 
from  the  granite  quarries  near  Quincy,  Mass.,  to  tide- 
water on  the  Neponset  River,  a  distance  of  three  miles. 
It  was  used  solely  to  haul  granite  from  the  quarry  to 
a  point  from  which  it  could  be  conveyed  by  water  to 
Boston.  The  granite  for  the  Bunker  Hill  monument 
was  transported  over  this  first  railroad.  The  gauge 
was  five  feet.  The  rails  were  pine  timbers  six  by 
twelve  inches,  on  top  of  which  was  an  oak  scantling 
two  by  four  inches,  faced  with  bar  iron  five-sixteenths 
of  an  inch  thick  and  two  and  a  half  inches  wide.  The 
ties  were  of  stone  twelve  inches  square  and  eight  feet 
long,  laid  on  a  foundation  of  broken  stone  three  feet 
deep.  Such  substantial  construction  was  expensive, 
costing  $11,250  a  mile,  but  it  reduced  the  cost  of 
transportation  to  one-sixth  of  what  it  had  been.  Be- 
ing down-grade  all  the  way,  two  horses  could  haul 
forty  tons  at  a  speed  of  four  and  a  half  miles  an  hour. 

The  Quincy  Railroad,  although  it  was  never  oper- 
ated with  anything  but  horses,  and  carried  no  traffic 
but  stone,  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  wonders  of  the 
age.  Visitors  came  long  distances  to  see  it  in  opera- 
tion. So  great  was  the  rush  to  see  the  railroad,  in 
fact,  that  a  thrifty  citizen  opened  a  tavern  near  where 
the  highway  from  Boston  to  Quincy  crossed  it  and 
did  a  thriving  business  catering  to  the  sightseers. 
Daniel  Webster  drove  over  one  day  after  attending 
a  funeral  in  the  vicinity,  and  after  a  critical  examina- 
tion hazarded  the  opinion  that  railroads  would  bear 


14  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

some  study.  But  not  until  years  afterward  did  the 
great  lawyer  and  statesman  concede  that  the  railroad 
was  a  success.  For  a  long  time  he  inclined  to  the 
belief  that  it  could  not  be  operated  with  locomo- 
tives. He  thought,  for  one  thing,  that  the  frost  on 
the  rails  in  winter  would  be  an  insuperable  obstacle. 

Shortly  after  the  Quincy  Railroad  was  finished  the 
Mauch  Chunk  Railroad,  the  second  in  America,  was 
thrown  open  to  traffic  and  public  admiration.  Busi- 
ness on  this  line  was  also  confined  to  a  single  com- 
modity, coal,  moving  in  one  direction.  The  Mauch 
Chunk  Railroad  extended  from  the  Lehigh  River  to 
the  Summit  Mines  near  Carbondale,  nine  miles  dis- 
tant and  at  an  elevation  of  nine  hundred  and  thirty- 
six  feet  above  the  river.  From  the  river  bank  there 
was  an  inclined  plane  two  thousand  one  hundred  feet 
long,  having  a  rise  of  two  hundred  and  twenty-five 
feet.  The  entire  nine  miles  was  built  in  two  months 
and  three  days  at  a  cost  of  twenty-seven  thousand 
dollars.  The  ties  were  of  wood  spaced  four  feet 
apart.  The  rails  were  of  wood  held  in  place  by 
wooden  keys  or  wedges  and  faced  with  iron  a  quarter 
of  an  inch  thick  and  an  inch  and  a  quarter  wide.  Cars 
carrying  a  ton  and  a  half  of  coal  were  taken  down  in 
"  brigades  "  of  six  to  ten,  in  charge  of  two  men,  to 
the  top  of  the  plane  in  thirty  minutes.  The  cars  were 
lowered  down  the  plane  one  at  a  time,  the  descent 
requiring  three-quarters  of  a  minute.  On  the  return 
trip  one  horse  hauled  three  empty  cars,  making  the 
journey  in  two  hours. 

These  two  railroads,  such  as  they  were,  served  as 
models  for  the  construction  of  the  first  railroad  de- 
signed for  a  general  transportation  business.  The 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  15 

first  act  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  Com- 
pany after  organizing  was  to  send  Philip  E.  Thomas, 
Alexander  Brown,  and  Thomas  Ellicott  to  study 
these  lines  for  ideas  to  be  applied  in  building  their 
own  road. 

Allen  sailed  from  New  York  in  January,  1828. 
Being  provided  with  letters  of  introduction,  he  was 
able  to  begin  his  investigations  without  delay  under 
the  most  favorable  conditions.  The  state  of  the  art 
of  railroad  building  cannot  be  described  better  than 
by  quoting  the  following  letter  to  the  board  of  direct- 
ors of  the  Charleston  and  Hamburg  Railroad.  The 
letter  is  of  peculiar  interest  because  it  was  a  link  in  a 
chain  of  circumstances  which  influenced  the  Charles- 
ton and  Hamburg  to  become  the  first  railroad  com- 
pany in  the  world  to  adopt  the  locomotive  as  a  motive 
power: 

"  I  have  now  the  pleasure  of  communicating  the  results  of 
some  observations  which  I  have  been  able  to  make  since  I  last 
wrote  you.  With  the  exception  of  one  or  two  small  roads  at 
some  of  the  coal  mines  near  this  place  the  railroad  at  Leeds 
is  the  first  of  much  importance  visited  after  leaving  Liver- 
pool. 

"  This  railroad,  three  and  a  half  miles  long,  extends  to  a 
mine.  It  was  constructed  about  fifteen  years  since.  The 
rails  are  of  cast  iron  in  lengths  of  three  feet,  and  mostly  in 
bad  order.  Most  of  this  road  descends  a  little  from  the  mine 
and  about  the  middle  the  line  has  a  self-acting  plane  three 
hundred  yards  in  length.  They  use  a  locomotive  from  each 
end  of  the  plane,  which  have  been  in  use  seven  or  eight  years, 
and  I  think  them  preferable  to  animal  power.  These  engines 
are  not  of  the  approved  kind.  They,  however,  travel  with 
their  train,  consisting  of  fifteen  or  twenty  cars  weighing 


16  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

nearly  four  tons  each,  at  the  rate  of  two  and  a  half  or  three 
miles  an  hour.  I  rode  up  and  down  the  line  on  one  of  them, 
and  find  that  they  are  easily  managed  and  that  their  direction 
can  be  sooner  changed  than  the  time  required  to  move  horses 
for  that  purpose. 

"  The  next  railroad  of  importance  that  I  visited  was  the 
Stockton  and  Darlington.  This  was  the  first  experiment  to 
apply  railroads  to  the  purposes  of  promiscuous  traffic,  and 
was  opened  about  two  years  since.  The  whole  extent  of  this 
road,  including  some  branches,  is  about  thirty  miles;  and 
although  the  general  object  was  to  open  communication  from 
navigation  at  Stockton  with  an  extensive  coal  region,  was 
also  designed  for  a  general  trade  with  the  interior.  This 
road  is  a  single  track,  and  although  the  passings  are  two  to 
three  in  the  mile,  the  detention  to  trade  is  not  very  great. 

"  They  use  both  horses  and  locomotive  steam  engines  upon 
the  road  and  I  had  a  fair  opportunity  to  test  their  relative 
utility.  The  result  is  much  in  favor  of  the  locomotive,  as  a 
reference  with  which  I  was  favored  to  the  accounts  of  the 
company  fully  testifies.  The  locomotives  on  this  road  are 
used  only  in  the  coal  trade,  and  run  a  distance  of  twenty 
miles  from  Stockton.  The  greater  part  of  this  distance 
descends  towards  Stockton,  varying  from  one-sixteenth  to 
one-third  of  an  inch  per  yard ;  no  part  ascends  in  that  direc- 
tion and  only  about  two  miles  is  level.  They  use  four  loco- 
motive engines  on  this  road  which  lead  from  twenty  to 
twenty-eight  cars  in  train  weighing  each  5,300  pounds  in- 
dependent of  the  car  itself,  and  travel  from  four  to  seven 
miles  an  hour.  Three  of  these  engines  are  of  Losh  and 
Stephenson's  construction,  as  they  are  called  here,  and  one  of 
them  of  Hackworth's. 

"  I  rode  up  and  down  on  these  different  engines  a  distance 
of  thirty  or  forty  miles.  Losh  and  Stephenson's  engines 
usually  carry  twenty  cars,  Hackworth's  twenty-four  and 
sometimes  twenty-eight  with  which  it  is  capable  of  travel- 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  17 

ing  six  to  seven  miles  an  hour.  The  others  travel  five  or  six, 
which  is  as  great  a  speed  as  I  think  prudent  to  move  at  when 
loaded.  Hackworth's  engine  is  capable  of  ten  or  twelve 
miles  an  hour  when  light.  In  returning  with  empty  cars  I 
found  the  greatest  ascents  required  the  whole  power  of  the 
engines  and  reduced  the  speed  nearly  one-half.  This  road  is 
of  wrought  iron  rails  in  lengths  of  fifteen  feet  which  weigh 
twenty-eight  pounds  to  the  yard. 

"  From  this  railroad  I  proceeded  to  Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
This  place,  with  the  neighboring  coal  mines  upon  the  Tyne,  is 
the  birthplace  and  cradle  of  railroads  and  locomotive  steam 
engines.  It  was  in  this  vicinity  railroads  were  first  in- 
troduced and  it  was  at  Killingworth,  about  five  miles  from 
the  city  of  Newcastle,  that  the  steam  locomotive  was  first 
used  to  advantage. 

"  Killingworth  is  the  residence  of  Wood,  the  author  of  the 
treatise  on  railroads.  Letters  which  the  politeness  of 
Stephenson  furnished  me  previous  to  my  leaving  Liverpool 
introduced  me  to  Wood,  who  treated  me  with  the  greatest 
cordiality  and  very  kindly  answered  all  inquiries  that 
curiosity  and  invention  could  suggest  on  the  subject  of  rail- 
roads and  locomotive  steam  engines.  The  Killingworth  rail- 
road extends  from  a  colliery  of  that  name  to  the  River  Tyne, 
a  distance  of  five  miles.  It  was  on  this  road  that  the  plate 
rail  was  used  at  a  very  early  period.  The  present  road  has 
been  laid  about  twenty-two  years  and  is  yet  in  pretty  good 
order.  The  rails  are  of  cast  iron  with  the  exception  of  a 
small  portion  which  was  laid  of  wrought  iron  by  way  of 
experiment  about  eight  or  nine  years  since.  They  have  used 
locomotive  steam  engines  here  about  five  years.  It  was  here 
Losh  and  Stephenson  made  their  experiments  on  locomotives 
and  here  Wood  made  most  of  the  experiments  recorded  in  his 
work  on  railroads,  which,  I  am  happy  to  find,  is  considered  as 
good  an  authority  in  this  country  as  with  us.  Wood  is  now 
preparing  a  second  edition  of  this  work,  which  will  comprise 


18  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

a  great  number  of  very  interesting  experiments  and  facts 
which  his  continued  attention  to  the  subject  has  developed. 

"  I  saw  these  locomotives  at  work  upon  this  road.  They 
performed  much  the  same  as  those  upon  the  Stockton  and 
Darlington  and  are  of  much  the  same  construction  as  the 
three  on  that  road.  I  have  the  particular  dimensions  of 
these  engines  as  well  as  those  upon  the  Stockton  and  Darling- 
ton road. 

"  My  next  object  was  to  visit  the  railroads  in  the  vicinity 
of  Killingworth,  and  they  are  as  common  here  as  coal  mines, 
which  are  to  be  seen  in  every  direction.  The  most  interesting 
of  these  to  visit  are  the  Springville  and  the  Helton  roads. 
The  Springville  road  is  a  recent  work,  and  in  very  fine  order. 
The  rails  are  of  wrought  iron,  which  is  now  altogether  used  in 
place  of  cast  iron.  They  use  only  one  locomotive  upon  this 
road,  which  performs  much  the  same  as  those  described.  The 
Helton  road  have  laid  by  their  locomotive  engines  on  account 
of  the  line  of  road  being  unfavorable  for  them. 

"  At  North  Shields  I  saw  a  railroad  which  was  laid  about 
twenty  years  ago  and  in  very  bad  order,  though  still  used. 

"  Previous  to  parting  with  Mr.  Wood  he  gave  me  letters  to 
Buchanan  and  Granger  of  Edinburgh,  my  next  object  being 
to  examine  the  railroads  of  Scotland.  These  gentlemen  con- 
struct engines  and  Granger  is  superintendent  of  most  of  the 
railroads  now  constructing  in  that  quarter.  They  are  con- 
structing a  railroad  from  Edinburgh  to  the  Dalkeith  col- 
lieries, a  distance  of  six  or  seven  miles.  This  will  be  an  ex- 
pensive work  in  tunneling,  cuttings,  and  embankments. 

"  After  spending  a  short  time  in  Edinburgh  I  went  in 
company  with  Mr.  Granger  to  Glasgow,  where  he  is  superin- 
tending several  railroads  and  had  the  pleasure  of  traveling 
with  him  over  the  whole  line  of  the  Kirkintilloch  railroad. 
The  road  commences  at  a  canal  about  nine  miles  from  Glas- 
gow and  extends  into  the  coal  region  about  eleven  miles. 
Seven  miles  of  this  road  have  been  in  use  eighteen  months ;  the 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  19 

rest  is  just  opened.  They  use  animal  power  only  on  this 
road,  but  they  are  constructing  one  from  Glasgow  to  connect 
with  the  farther  end  of  this,  eight  miles  in  length,  upon  which 
they  intend  using  steam  locomotives.  This  is  heavy  work; 
part  of  the  cuttings  and  embankments  being  forty  to  fifty 
feet  in  depth. 

"  These  railroads,  together  with  those  described  in  my  last, 
comprise  all  the  railroads  of  importance  in  the  Kingdom. 
Several  others  are  projected,  and  some  minor  ones  are  in 
progress.  Upon  the  whole  the  subject  appears  to  be  quite 
as  popular  here  as  with  us,  notwithstanding  they  understand 
so  much  better  than  we  do  the  expense  of  constructing  rail- 
roads." 

More  than  a  year  before  the  famous  Rainhill  trial 
of  October  14,  1829,  which  was  to  determine  the  fate 
of  the  locomotive  and  immortalize  the  name  of  Ste- 
phenson,  this  young  American  engineer,  then  but 
twenty-six  years  old,  executed  his  commission  for  the 
Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal  Company  by  ordering 
the  first  four  locomotives  ever  seen  in  the  United 
States.  Three  of  these  were  from  the  works  of  Fos- 
ter, Rastrick  &  Co.,  of  Stourbridge,  the  fourth  was 
built  by  Stephenson.  The  first  of  these  locomotives 
arrived  in  New  York  in  January,  1829 ;  the  last  one  in 
September  of  the  same  year.  One  of  these  locomo- 
tives was  blocked  up  so  the  wheels  cleared  the  ground, 
there  being  no  track  available,  and  fired  up  for  the 
edification  of  the  "  gentlemen  of  science  and  particular 
intelligence,"  who,  according  to  the  New  York  En- 
quirer',  "  unanimously  attended." 

The  Delaware  and  Hudson  Company  having  fin- 
ished its  railroad  from  the  canal  terminus  at  Hones- 
dale  to  the  mines  at  Carbondale  sixteen  and  a  half 


20  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

miles  distant,  early  in  1829,  one  of  these  locomotives, 
the  "  Stourbridge  Lion,"  was  selected  for  trial.  It 
was  shipped  from  the  foot  of  Beach  Street  up  the 
Hudson  to  Rondout,  and  thence  by  canal  to  Hones- 
dale.  Allen,  being  at  leisure  at  the  time,  volunteered 
to  set  it  up  and  make  the  trial  trip. 

The  Stourbridge  Lion  was  so  named  because  the 
painter  who  put  the  finishing  touches  on  it  detected  in 
the  rounded  boiler  head  a  far-fetched  resemblance  to 
the  King  of  Beasts,  and  so  painted  in  glaring  red  a 
lion's  head  thereon.  The  locomotive  had  four  wheels 
coupled,  all  drivers,  and  two  vertical  cylinders  of 
thirty-six  inches  stroke  at  the  back  end  of  the  hori- 
zontal boiler.  Motion  was  communicated  to  the 
drivers  by  two  grasshopper  beams.  The  wheels  were 
of  oak  with  iron  tires. 

Crowds  as  eagerly  curious  as  those  in  New  York 
flocked  to  see  the  locomotive,  and  the  day  of  the  trial 
trip,  Saturday,  August  8,  1829,  was  observed  as  a 
holiday.  A  cannon  had  been  borrowed  by  the  citizens 
of  Honesdale  to  add  noise  to  the  celebration.  It  burst 
after  a  few  rounds  had  been  fired,  shattering  the  arm 
of  Alva  Adams,  one  of  the  men  who  were  handling  it. 

In  after  years  Allen  was  very  fond  of  telling  the 
story  of  that  first  trip  of  a  locomotive  on  American 
soil.  Here  is  the  story  as  he  related  it  on  one  occa- 
sion: 

"  When  was  it  ?  Where  was  it  ?  And  who  awakened  its 
energies  and  directed  its  movements?  It  was  in  the  year 
1829  on  August  9  *  on  the  banks  of  the  Lackawaxen,  at  the 

*  Mr.  Allen  seems  to  have  been  mistaken  about  the  date,  which  was 
really  August  8.  He  realized  the  untrustworthiness  of  his  memory,  for  he 
often  deplored  his  failure  to  keep  a  diary  in  his  younger  days. 


THE  "STOURBRIDGE  LION," 
The  first  locomotive  that  ever  turned  a  wheel  on  American  soil. 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  21 

commencement  of  the  railroad  connecting  the  canal  of  the 
Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal  Company  with  the  coal  mines, 
and  he  who  addresses  you  was  the  only  person  on  that  loco- 
motive. The  circumstances  which  led  to  my  being  alone  on 
the  engine  were  these : 

"  The  road  had  been  built  in  the  summer ;  the  structure  was 
of  hemlock  timber  with  rails  of  large  dimensions  notched  on 
caps  placed  far  apart.  The  timber  had  cracked  and  warped 
from  exposure  to  the  sun. 

"  After  about  three  hundred  feet  of  straight  line  the  road 
crossed  Lackawaxen  Creek  on  trestlework  about  thirty  feet 
high,  and  with  a  curve  of  about  three  hundred  and  fifty  to 
four  hundred  feet  radius.  The  impression  was  very  genera] 
that  the  iron  monster  would  break  down  the  road,  or  that  it 
would  leave  the  track  at  the  curve  and  plunge  into  the  creek. 
My  reply  to  such  apprehensions  was  that  it  was  too  late  to  con- 
sider the  probability  of  such  occurrences ;  that  there  was  no 
other  course  but  to  have  a  trial  made  of  the  strange  animal 
which  had  been  brought  there  at  great  expense;  but  that  it 
was  not  necessary  that  more  than  one  should  be  involved  in 
its  fate;  that  I  would  like  the  first  ride  alone,  and  the  time 
would  come  when  I  should  look  back  to  the  incident  with  great 
interest. 

"  As  I  placed  my  hand  on  the  throttle  valve  handle  I  was 
undecided  whether  I  should  move  slowly  or  with  a  fair  degree 
of  speed,  but  holding  that  the  road  would  prove  safe,  and 
preferring,  if  we  did  go  down,  to  go  handsomely,  and  without 
any  evidence  of  timidity,  I  started  with  considerable  velocity, 
passed  the  curves  over  the  creek  safely,  and  was  soon  out  of 
hearing  of  the  cheers  of  the  vast  assemblage  present.  At  the 
end  of  two  or  three  miles  I  reversed  the  valve  and  returned 
without  accident  to  the  place  of  starting,  having  made  the 
first  locomotive  trip  on  the  western  hemisphere." 

Allen  played  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  development 
of  the  railroad,  first  as  chief  engineer  of  the  Charles- 


22  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

ton  and  Hamburg,  and  afterwards  as  constructing 
engineer  and  president  of  the  Erie;  but  in  all  the 
eighty-seven  years  of  his  busy  life  he  never  again 
officiated  as  a  locomotive  engineer. 

This  trial  convinced  Allen  and  the  directors  that 
the  road  was  not  suitable  for  locomotives,  so  the  Stour- 
bridge  Lion  was  run  off  the  rails  near  the  canal  dock, 
where  it  was  permitted  to  stand,  an  object  of  dread 
to  all  the  children  in  the  neighborhood,  who  made  long 
detours  to  avoid  passing  near  the  monster.  When 
winter  came  a  rough  board  shed  was  built  over  it,  but 
curious  hands  soon  tore  down  planks  enough  to  give 
an  unobstructed  view.  There  the  Stourbridge  Lion 
stood  for  fourteen  years.  By  that  time  so  many  parts 
had  been  broken  off  and  carried  away  that  it  was 
useless  as  a  locomotive.  Then  the  boiler  was  taken 
to  the  Carbondale  shops  of  the  company  to  supply 
steam  for  a  stationary  engine  until  it  was  worn  out, 
when  it  was  consigned  to  the  ignominious  oblivion  of 
the  scrap  heap. 

The  wheels  of  the  other  three  locomotives  of  that 
first  consignment  were  destined  never  to  rest  on  a  rail. 
They  were  scored  for  some  time  in  the  warehouse  of 
Abeel  &  Dunscombe,  on  the  East  Side  in  New 
York.  Their  ultimate  fate  is  one  of  the  mysteries 
which  will  never  be  solved. 

Soon  after  this  trip  on  the  Stourbridge  Lion,  Allen 
went  to  Charleston  to  take  up  the  duties  of  chief  engi- 
neer of  the  Charleston  and  Hamburg  Railroad,  char- 
tered by  the  South  Carolina  legislature  May  12,  1828, 
a  little  more  than  a  year  after  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio 
was  organized,  to  build  from  Charleston  to  the  Savan- 
nah River,  one  hundred  and  thirty-six  miles  away. 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  23 

One  of  his  first  acts  in  his  official  capacity  was  to 
attend  a  meeting  of  the  board  of  directors  on  Jan- 
uary 14,  1830,  five  days  after  his  appointment,  at 
which  he  recommended  that  the  locomotive  be  adopted 
as  the  sole  motive  power,  saying  "  there  was  no  reason 
to  expect  any  material  improvement  in  the  breed  of 
horses,  but  the  man  was  not  living  who  knew  what  the 
breed  of  locomotives  was  to  place  at  command."  The 
directors  were  in  a  position  to  appreciate  the  force  of 
the  argument,  for  they  had  experimented  with  sailing 
cars  and  found  them  wanting. 

It  is  curious  how  remarkably  persistent  has  been 
the  attempt  to  utilize  the  sail  as  a  motive  power  on 
land.  It  was  first  tried  in  Holland  in  1620,  where 
cars  containing  twenty-eight  passengers  covered  forty- 
two  miles  on  the  smooth,  hard  beach  in  two  hours.  As 
late  as  1878  a  Western  genius  went  through  the 
threadbare  process  of  discovering  that  sailing  cars 
could  not  be  operated  successfully'. 

Having  convinced  themselves  that  the  wind  was 
unsatisfactory  for  the  movement  of  trains,  the  direct- 
ors of  the  Charleston  and  Hamburg  Railroad  had 
offered  a  prize  of  five  hundred  dollars  for  the 
best  horse-power  motor.  The  prize  was  won  by  C.  E. 
Detmold  with  an  endless  chain  platform  mounted  on 
the  car,  by  means  of  which  one  horse  was  able  to  pro- 
pel a  car  carrying  twelve  passengers  at  the  rate  of 
twelve  miles  an  hour. 

Without  leaving  their  seats  the  directors  unani- 
mously voted  to  adopt  the  recommendations  of  their 
chief  engineer,  thus  earning  the  distinction  of  being 
the  first  railroad  company  in  the  world  to  declare  for 
steam.  Allen  also  recommended  that  a  gauge  of  five 


24  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

feet  be  adopted.  He  afterwards  tried  to  get  the  Erie 
to  adopt  that  gauge.  Probably  there  are  few  rail- 
road officials  to-day  who  do  not  regret  that  Allen's 
recommendations  were  not  followed.  The  addition 
of  three  and  a  half  inches  to  the  width  of  the  track 
would  be  a  material  advantage  now.  Only  a  year  ago 
James  J.  Hill  gave  out  a  statement  for  publication, 
in  which  he  deplored  the  error  of  judgment  that  pre- 
vented the  adoption  of  a  broader  gauge  for  the  rail- 
roads. The  enormous  cost  would  render  a  change  at 
this  late  day  impossible. 

Having  determined  to  use  steam,  the  directors  of 
the  Charleston  and  Hamburg  Railroad  lost  no  time 
in  authorizing  the  construction  of  the  first  loco- 
motive ever  built  in  America  for  regular  service. 
It  was  a  fearful  and  wonderful  contrivance, 
designed  by  E.  L.  Miller,  of  Charleston.  The 
vertical  boiler  looked  something  like  an  overgrown 
porter  bottle  of  the  old  style.  The  fire-box  had 
"  teats "  radiating  from  its  outer  wall  to  afford 
additional  heating  surface.  The  smoke  escaped 
through  openings  in  the  sides  into  an  outer  jacket 
encasing  the  boiler.  The  four  wheels  had  iron  hubs 
and  tires  and  wooden  spokes  and  felloes.  The  two 
cylinders,  six  inches  in  diameter  by  sixteen  inches 
stroke,  placed  in  front  of  the  boiler,  worked  cranks 
inside  the  frame.  The  engine,  which  was  christened 
the  "Best  Friend  of  Charleston,"  was  built  at  the 
West  Point  Foundry  in  New  York. 

Upon  arriving  in  Charleston  it  was  set  up  by  Julius 
D.  Petsch,  foreman  of  Dotterer  &  Easton's  machine 
shop,  assisted  by  Nicholas  W.  Darrell.  On  November 
2,  1830,  the  trial  trip  was  made  with  Darrell  as  engi- 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  25 

neer.  The  wheels  proved  to  be  so  weak  that  one  of 
them  sprung  out  of  shape  and  threw  the  engine  into 
the  ditch  on  the  return  trip.  A  second  trip  was  made 
on  December  14,  and  a  third  on  the  following  day, 
when  the  Best  Friend  proved  to  possess  power  dou- 
ble the  contract  requirements.  It  was  able  to  make 
sixteen  to  twenty-one  miles  an  hour  with  forty  or  fifty 
passengers  in  four  or  five  cars,  and  to  attain  a  speed 
of  thirty-five  miles  an  hour  without  cars. 

Darrell  was  so  delighted  with  his  experience  that 
he  gave  up  his  job  as  machinist  to  become  the  first 
regular  locomotive  engineer  in  America.  The  Best 
Friend  came  very  near  killing  him  a  few  months 
later.  Not  liking  the  noise  of  steam  escaping  from 
the  safety  valve,  the  negro  fireman  fastened  it  shut. 
Some  accounts  say  that  he  "  sat "  on  the  valve.  If 
true  this  statement  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the 
fireman  must  have  been  a  combination  of  a  salamander 
and  a  remarkably  gifted  acrobat.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
the  boiler  exploded,  scalding  Darrell  severely  and  in- 
juring the  fireman  so  that  he  died  two  days  later. 
After  that  exhibition  of  its  untrustworthiness  and  de- 
structive powers  the  locomotive  was  regarded  with 
suspicion.  For  a  long  time  a  "  barrier  car  "  piled 
high  with  cotton  bales  was  interposed  between  the 
locomotive  and  the  train  to  protect  passengers  from 
possible  explosions. 

Meanwhile,  on  January  15, 1831,  with  the  aid  of  the 
Best  Friend,  the  first  regular  passenger  service  on 
an  American  railroad  was  instituted.  On  that  first 
trip  was  a  passenger  who  was  to  exert  a  unique  influ- 
ence in  shaping  the  destinies  of  the  Erie,  as  will  appear 
later. 


26  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Studying  the  performances  of  this  first  American- 
built  locomotive,  Allen  came  to  the  conclusion  that  a 
radical  change  would  have  to  be  made  in  the  design 
if  results  were  to  be  obtained.  This  conclusion  led 
the  young  engineer  to  take  another  first  step  in  the 
history  of  the  railroad  which  was  to  be  of  far-reaching 
importance.  Like  other  early  railroads,  the  Charles- 
ton and  Hamburg  had  wooden  rails,  in  this  instance 
six  by  twelve  inches,  on  which  was  spiked  strap  iron 
half  an  inch  thick  by  two  and  a  half  inches  wide.  On 
account  of  the  weakness  of  the  structure,  Allen,  in  a 
report  dated  May  16,  1831,  recommended  that  the 
load  on  each  wheel  be  limited  to  a  ton  and  a  half.  To 
allow  locomotives  of  effective  size  to  be  built,  he  rec- 
ommended engines  with  six  or  eight  wheels. 

Receiving  the  sanction  of  the  directors,  Allen  ac- 
cordingly designed  a  locomotive  with  a  single  pair  of 
drivers  and  with  a  four-wheeled  truck  under  the  front 
end.  The  merits  of  the  four-wheeled  truck  were  so 
obvious  that  it  was  universally  adopted.  Without  it 
the  railroad  could  not  have  been  developed. 

This  first  locomotive  with  a  four-wheeled  truck  and 
the  second  to  be  built  in  America,  called  the  "  West 
Point,"  was  also  built  at  the  West  Point  Foundry,  and 
put  in  service  March  5,  1831,  when  it  proved  its  effi- 
ciency by  drawing  four  cars  containing  one  hundred 
and  seventeen  passengers,  of  whom  fifty  were  ladies, 
a  distance  of  two  and  three-fourths  miles  in  eleven 
minutes. 

On  October  1,  1834,  a  patent  on  the  four-wheeled 
truck  was  granted  to  Ross  Winans,  of  Baltimore,  one 
of  the  very  earliest  mechanical  geniuses  of  the  rail- 
road, who  had  shown  that  the  flange  of  a  car  wheel 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  27 

should  be  placed  on  the  inside  instead  of  the  outside, 
as  was  the  practice  at  first,  and  that  the  journal 
should  be  placed  outside.  Winans  was  one  of  the 
most  successful  of  the  early  locomotive  builders.  He 
made  a  great  fortune  in  constructing  the  first  rail- 
road in  Russia.  It  cost  twenty  years  of  litigation  and 
two  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  establish  the  fact 
that  he  was  not  the  first  to  invent  and  use  the  four- 
wheeled  truck.  The  testimony  of  Allen  and  his  assist- 
ant was  the  deciding  factor  that  turned  the  verdict 
against  Winans. 

While  South  Carolina  was  busy  with  her  first  rail- 
road, Massachusetts  was  also  laying  the  foundations 
of  a  transportation  system.  In  1829,  when  the  pop- 
ulation of  Boston  was  sixty  thousand  and  of  Lowell 
six  thousand,  fifteen  thousand  tons  of  freight  and 
thirty-seven  thousand  passengers  were  transported 
annually  between  these  two  points.  One  might  take 
a  boat  on  the  Middlesex  Canal,  which  covered  the 
most  of  the  distance  of  twenty-three  and  a  half  miles 
in  seven  hours  at  a  cost  of  seventy-five  cents.  The 
traveler  could  walk  the  rest  of  the  way  into  Boston, 
or,  if  he  was  extravagant,  could  ride  uptown  in  an 
omnibus  for  another  shilling.  If  he  was  in  a  great 
hurry,  and  money  was  no  object,  he  could  cover  the 
distance  in  a  stage  coach  in  three  hours  for  a  fare  of 
a  dollar  and  a  quarter.  Some  one  proposed  a  rail- 
road as  an  improvement  even  on  the  swift  stage  coach. 
Thereupon  the  State  appropriated  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars  to  make  a  survey,  as  the  result  of  which 
the  engineers  reported  that  the  road  would  cost  one 
hundred  and  sixty-eight  thousand  dollars. 

The  canal  company  was  by  no  means  disposed  to 


28  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

give  up  its  traffic  without  a  fight.  It  set  up  the  claim 
that  its  charter  gave  it  a  monopoly  of  the  transporta- 
tion business  between  Boston  and  Lowell.  The  legis- 
lature eventually  refused  to  recognize  the  claim,  but 
the  canal  people,  aided  by  a  considerable  faction  which 
disapproved  of  such  perilous  innovations  as  railroads, 
fought  off  the  charter  for  two  sessions. 

Construction  was  finally  begun  November  2,  1831, 
and  the  road  was  opened  for  traffic  June  26,  1835. 
It  had  cost  many  times  the  original  estimate,  but  the 
directors  consoled  themselves  with  the  reflection  that  it 
was  so  well  built  that  it  would  last  forever.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  it  was  too  well  built.  It  had  monster  gran- 
ite ties  embedded  in  broken  stone,  which  simply  served 
as  anvils  on  which  even  the  light  equipment  of  those 
early  days  quickly  pounded  the  flimsy  wooden  rails 
and  thin  iron  straps  to  pieces,  so  that  it  soon  had  to  be 
rebuilt.  However,  even  with  all  this  heavy  expendi- 
ture the  road  was  one  of  the  most  profitable  of  its 
length  in  the  United  States.  For  a  quarter  of  a 
century  it  paid  dividends  at  the  rate  of  six  and  three- 
quarters  per  cent  per  annum. 

The  year  the  road  was  opened  the  directors  indulged 
in  the  luxury  of  two  locomotives  imported  from  Eng- 
land. In  common  with  several  other  boards  of  direct- 
ors the  Massachusetts  men  made  the  mistake  of 
thinking  that  locomotives  could  only  be  built  in  the 
land  of  their  origin,  and  that  only  an  Englishman 
could  run  them.  The  first  locomotive  arrived  some 
weeks  before  its  engineer;  and  the  directors,  being 
somewhat  eager  to  try  their  purchase,  had  it  set  up  by 
native  talent,  none  of  whom  had  ever  seen  a  locomo- 
tive, or  even  a  picture  of  one.  They  had  to  rely  solely 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  29 

upon  their  own  common  sense  in  putting  the  parts  to- 
gether. When  the  belated  engineer  arrived  he  was 
alone.  He  was  quite  sure  a  mere  Yankee  could  not 
run  the  other  engine,  but  he  was  willing  to  send  to 
England  for  a  friend  to  take  the  position.  But  the 
directors  were  too  impatient.  They  thought  the  Eng- 
lishman might  coach  an  American  so  he  could  worry 
along  somehow. 

The  American  proved  an  exceedingly  dull  pupil. 
At  least  his  engine  was  continually  out  of  order.  The 
English  engineer  would  tinker  it  up  again,  always 
taking  care  to  bring  out  his  own  superior  skill  and 
the  Yankee's  lack  of  it,  until  the  latter  became  sus- 
picious. He  hid  himself  in  the  engine  house  and 
watched  one  night.  The  next  night  one  of  the  direct- 
ors kept  the  vigil  with  the  Yankee  engineer.  The 
English  engineer  was  caught  red-handed  in  the  act  of 
disabling  the  locomotive  in  order  to  discredit  the 
American.  No  more  imported  engineers  were  ever 
employed  on  the  Boston  and  Lowell. 

The  Boston  and  Providence  Railroad,  construction 
on  which  was  begun  in  December,  1832,  was  opened 
a  few  days  after  the  Boston  and  Lowell,  and  the  Bos- 
ton and  Worcester,  forty-two  miles  long,  in  the  fol- 
lowing month.  In  1839  this  road  was  extended  to  the 
Connecticut  River,  sixty-two  miles  from  Boston. 

One  of  the  early  railroads  that  was  little  heard  of 
because  the  builders  chanced  to  have  the  money  to 
carry  out  their  project,  and  chose  to  keep  the  stock 
in  their  own  possession,  was  the  Paterson  and  Hud- 
son River,  incorporated  January  21,  1831,  to  build 
from  Paterson  to  Weehawken,  now  a  part  of  the 
Erie.  In  the  American  Railroad  Journal  of  June 


30  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

23,  1832,  is  a  description  of  a  trip  which  the  editor, 
D.  K.  Minor,  made  on  this  road,  which  is  of  peculiar 
interest  for  the  light  it  sheds  on  the  popular  idea  of 
what  constituted  a  satisfactory  railroad  in  1832.  Said 
the  editor: 

"  Seeing  a  communication  a  day  or  two  since  in  the  New 
York  American  from  which  we  learned  that  a  portion  of  the 
Paterson  and  Hudson  River  Railroad  was  completed,  and 
that  elegant  cars  were  provided  for  the  accommodation  of 
passengers,  we  determined  at  once  to  avail  ourselves  of  the 
first  leisure  day  to  have  a  ride  on  the  railroad. 

"  We  left  Wall  Street  at  7 :30  and  crossed  to  Hoboken  at 
8  A.M.,  where  we  took  a  seat  in  an  excellent  coach  with  good 
horses  belonging  to  Kinnely,  Rodgers  &  Roy,  whose  coaches 
leave  regularly  four  times,  viz. :  8  and  10  and  2  and  4,  for 
Aquackanonk,  where  the  line  of  the  railroad  is  intersected  and 
the  passengers  are  relieved  from  the  inconvenient  small 
coaches  and  dusty  roads  by  taking  seats  in  splendid  and 
convenient  cars  which  will  with  ease  accommodate  twenty 
persons  inside  and  from  six  to  twelve  on  the  top,  to  each  of 
which  is  attached  a  fleet  horse  managed  by  a  careful  driver. 

"  The  distance  from  the  Aquackanonk  terminus  of  the  rail- 
road to  the  brick  meeting  house  at  Paterson  is  four  and  three- 
fourths  miles,  and  consists  of  one  level  and  two  inclined 
planes.  From  Aquackanonk  the  ascent  is  gradual  for  about 
three  miles,  passing  over  one  or  two  embankments  and 
through  cuts  of  rock  from  ten  to  twenty  feet  deep  and  about 
one  hundred  and  fifty  yards  in  length.  On  passing  the  sum- 
mit level  the  descent  is  at  an  average  of  about  twenty-one  feet 
to  the  mile  until  reaching  the  depot  at  Paterson. 

"  The  time  required  to  perform  the  distance  of  four  and 
three-fourths  miles  varies  from  twenty  to  twenty-five  minutes 
according  to  circumstances.  We  were  in  going  out  twenty- 
three  and  in  returning  twenty  minutes,  and  it  is  scarcely 


DAWN  OF  THE  RAILROAD  ERA  31 

possible  for  those  who  have  not  had  an  opportunity  to 
participate  in  the  pleasure  of  an  excursion  upon  a  railroad  to 
imagine  the  delightful  sensation  which  it  produces. 

"  The  passenger  is  scarcely  aware  of  movement  except  by 
the  rapidity  with  which  he  passes  objects.  He  feels  in 
perfect  safety,  although  at  times  his  elevation  above  sur- 
rounding fields  may  be  fifteen  or  twenty  feet.  There  is  not 
the  least  danger  to  be  apprehended  from  a  deviation  from  the 
rails  as  the  depth  of  the  flange  on  the  wheels  and  the  weight 
of  the  cars  render  it  impossible  for  one  or  two  horses  to  move 
it  sideways,  whilst  the  guard — an  apparatus  for  removing 
obstructions — prevents  anything  over  half  an  inch  in  diameter 
from  interfering  with  the  wheels.  For  persons  fond  of  in- 
haling the  cool  breezes  or  enjoying  the  green  fields  and  the 
beautiful  flowers  of  the  country  we  cannot  imagine  a  more 
delightful  excursion  at  so  little  cost,  both  in  time  and  money, 
than  a  trip  to  Paterson ;  which  may  be  performed  out  and 
home  again  in  one  day  with  ample  time  to  visit  the  curi- 
osities of  that  interesting  and  growing  town." 

But  American  railroad  builders  progressed  so  rap- 
idly beyond  the  stage  at  which  "  fleet  horses  "  guided  by 
"  careful  drivers  "  hauling  "  splendid  and  convenient 
cars  "  containing  a  score  of  passengers  over  pine  rails 
at  the  rate  of  twelve  miles  an  hour,  satisfied  their 
conceptions  of  what  a  first-class  transportation  sys- 
tem should  be,  that  in  1840,  or  a  dozen  years  after  the 
first  crude  experiment  was  tried,  they  led  the  world, 
as  they  have  done  ever  since.  M.  Thiers,  the  great 
historian  and  statesman,  then  prime  minister  of 
France,  recognized  American  supremacy  in  railroad 
building  in  that  year  by  sending  Michel  Chevalier,  a 
distinguished  engineer,  to  study  our  methods,  for  the 
benefit  of  French  roads. 

The  circumstances  under  which  the  evolution  of 


32  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

the  great  trunk  lines  was  accomplished  varied  greatly. 
Each  set  of  conditions  produced  a  distinct  type  of 
development.  To  present  the  story  of  the  early 
struggles  of  representative  systems  having  the  strong- 
est individuality  will  be  the  aim  of  the  ensuing 
chapters. 


CHAPTER  II 
AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD 

WHEN  the  rising  tide  of  trade  and  emigration, 
which  had  been  held  back  by  the  Alleghanies 
as  by  a  great  dam,  burst  around  their  flanks  in  1825 
by  way  of  the  Erie  Canal  and  the  Lakes,  the  little 
stream  of  traffic  which  had  trickled  over  their  sum- 
mits along  the  national  turnpike  from  Baltimore 
to  Cincinnati  subsided.  In  this  phenomenon  the 
shrewder  business  men  of  Baltimore  saw  foreshad- 
owed the  doom  of  their  city's  prosperity. 

With  such  a  tremendous  advantage  as  a  water 
route  to  the  heart  of  the  growing  West,  New  York 
would  monopolize  the  commerce  of  the  country, 
while  Baltimore  and  Philadelphia  would  be  dwarfed 
to  the  proportions  of  mere  local  trading  centers. 

Something  must  be  done  promptly  to  counteract 
New  York's  advantage.  The  era  of  furious  and 
losing  canal  speculation  which  raged  from  1810  to 
1840  was  then  at  its  height.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, the  logical  thing  to  do  appeared  to  be  to 
hasten  the  building  of  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio 
Canal,  which  had  been  one  of  Washington's  dreams. 

But  when  a  board  of  government  engineers,  headed 
by  the  renowned  General  Simon  Bernard,  who  had 
been  aide-de-camp  to  Napoleon,  and  who,  as  a  briga- 
dier-general in  the  United  States  Engineer  Corps, 
had  planned  an  elaborate  system  of  sea-coast  defenses, 


34  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

and  had  built  Fortress  Monroe,  reported  in  1826  that 
the  proposed  canal,  241  miles  long,  would  have 
ascents  and  descents  aggregating  3,185  feet;  that  to 
make  these  398  locks  would  be  required ;  that  the  total 
cost  would  be  $22,375,427,  and  that  when  it  was  built 
the  water  supply,  which  would  have  to  come  from 
mountain  streams,  would  be  uncertain,  the  majority 
realized  at  last  that  Baltimore's  imperiled  commer- 
cial prestige  could  never  be  retained  by  a  canal.  Yet 
no  one  had  an  alternative  to  offer. 

One  morning,  when  Philip  E.  Thomas,  a  Quaker 
merchant  and  philanthropist,  and  one  of  the  most 
highly  esteemed  citizens  of  Baltimore,  reached  his 
desk  in  the  Mechanics'  Bank,  of  which  he  was  presi- 
dent, he  found  a  letter  from  his  brother  Evan,  who 
was  then  in  London  on  business. 

He  read  the  letter  through  twice,  mused  a  while 
over  it,  read  it  a  third  time,  then,  calling  a  messenger, 
sent  for  his  friend  George  Brown,  one  of  the  directors 
of  the  bank. 

"  George,"  said  the  banker  when  his  friend  ap- 
peared, "  I  have  a  letter  from  brother  Evan  which, 
I  think,  will  interest  thee.  It  tells  of  a  plan  to  build 
a  road  from  Liverpool  to  Manchester  over  which  car- 
riages will  be  drawn  upon  iron  rails.  Some  say  this 
will  afford  a  cheaper  and  quicker  way  of  hauling 
goods  than  even  a  canal." 

"  Why,  I  have  a  letter  from  my  brother  Tom  tell- 
ing about  the  same  thing." 

"  I  have  been  thinking,  George,  that  perhaps  one 
of  these  railroads  across  the  mountains  to  the  West 
might  be  the  means  of  maintaining  the  prosperity  of 
our  city." 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  35 

"  The  very  thing  I  have  been  thinking  of  all  morn- 
ing." 

"  Let  us  get  together  this  evening  and  talk  it 
over." 

"  Agreed.  Let  us  ask  a  few  of  our  friends  to  meet 
us." 

"  Very  good.  Now,  thee  has  a  large  house.  Sup- 
pose we  meet  at  thy  house  at  seven  o'clock  this  even- 
ing? " 

So  it  came  about  that  twenty-five  of  the  most  in- 
fluential men  in  Baltimore,  including  Charles  Carroll, 
of  Carrollton,  one  of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  met  in  George  Brown's  house,  Mon- 
day evening,  February  12,  1827,  to  discuss  the  feasi- 
bility of  a  railroad  from  Baltimore  to  the  West.  At 
that  time  there  was  no  such  thing  in  existence  as  a 
railroad  for  transporting  passengers  and  merchandise 
between  distant  points. 

There  were  a  few  so-called  railroads  in  England, 
crude  and  inadequate  affairs  for  moving  coal  and  the 
like  from  the  mines  to  the  nearest  available  water 
transportation.  Stephenson  had  made  his  first  ex- 
periments on  the  Stockton  and  Darlington,  but  they 
were  not  regarded  as  demonstrating  conclusively  the 
advantage  of  the  locomotive  over  other  motive  power. 

The  construction  of  the  Manchester  and  Liverpool 
Railway  had  been  begun  after  a  fierce  contest  in  Par- 
liament. In  America,  there  was  a  railway  at  Quincy, 
Mass.,  three  miles  long,  from  a  granite  quarry  to  the 
Neponset  River,  on  which  horses  were  used. 

The  only  other  railway  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic 
was  from  the  coal  mines  at  Mauch  Chunk,  Pa.,  to  the 
Lehigh  River,  nine  miles  away.  Empty  cars  were 


36  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

hauled  up  the  mountains  by  mules.  The  mules  were 
then  placed  on  platforms  on  the  loaded  cars,  and  rode 
to  the  bottom  of  the  inclined  plane,  down  which  the 
cars  were  carried  by  gravity. 

It  is  recorded  that  the  mules  had  such  a  keen  appre- 
ciation of  the  superiority  of  the  railroad  as  a  means 
of  transportation  that  they  could  not  be  induced  to 
walk  down  the  mountain. 

With  such  a  scarcity  of  material,  it  did  not  take 
long  for  Messrs.  Thomas  and  Brown  to  tell  their 
neighbors  all  they  knew  about  railroads,  but  so  great 
was  the  need  of  some  effective  form  of  communica- 
tion with  the  region  beyond  the  mountains,  and  so 
convincingly  were  their  views  presented,  that  a  com- 
mittee of  nine  was  appointed  to  investigate  the  whole 
subject  and  report  to  the  others  one  week  later. 

When  the  meeting  was  called  to  order,  February 
19,  the  committee  had  ready  a  report  of  thirty-four 
printed  pages,  showing  a  comprehension  of  the  useful- 
ness of  a  railroad  which  under  the  circumstances  was 
amazing.  It  reads  as  if  it  had  been  penned  by  a 
railroad  promoter  in  the  year  of  grace  1908. 

The  report  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  dis- 
trict mainly  dependent  on  the  proposed  route  across 
the  mountains  for  the  conveyance  of  its  surplus  prod- 
uce already  contained  nearly  two  million  inhabitants, 
or  one-fifth  of  the  population  of  the  United  States, 
while  the  population  dependent  on  the  Erie  Canal  was 
not  more  than  one  million ;  yet  the  traffic  on  the  canal 
had  grown  from  three  hundred  and  forty  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  sixty-one  dollars  in  1824,  the  year 
of  its  opening,  to  seven  hundred  and  sixty-five  thou- 
sand dollars  in  1826. 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  37 

There  was  a  great  variety  of  articles  produced  in 
the  country  which  from  lack  of  means  of  transporta- 
tion were  then  of  little  value,  but  which  would  become 
a  source  of  wealth  if  a  railroad  were  built. 

For  example,  a  barrel  of  flour  was  worth  five  dol- 
lars in  Baltimore;  in  Wheeling,  a  barrel  of  flour  for 
shipment  to  Baltimore  could  be  sold  for  only  one  dol- 
lar, because  it  would  cost  four  dollars  to  haul  it  across 
the  mountains  in  wagons,  whereas  if  a  railroad  were 
built  the  flour  could  be  transported  at  a  cost  of  one 
dollar.  Thus  the  railroad  would  raise  the  value  of 
flour  in  Wheeling  from  one  dollar  to  four  dollars  a 
barrel. 

But  speaking  of  prophetic  foresight,  how  is  this 
passage  from  a  report  penned  at  a  time  when  the 
world  had  not  yet  seen  a  real  railroad  in  operation? 

"  To  convince  any  one  that  there  is  no  probability  that  the 
trade  herein  estimated  will  be  likely  hereafter  to  decline,  it 
will  only  be  necessary  to  observe  that  the  population  on  which 
the  calculations  are  founded  is  rapidly  increasing  and  that  it 
must  for  several  generations  continue  to  increase.  The  coun- 
try around  Chesapeake  Bay  was  first  settled  by  Europeans  in 
1632,  and  in  1800  the  white  population  had  barely  reached 
the  Ohio  River ;  that  is  to  say,  in  one  hundred  and  sixty  years 
it  had  advanced  westward  about  four  hundred  miles,  or  at  the 
rate  of  two  and  one-half  miles  a  year. 

"  There  is  now  a  dense  population  extending  as  far  west 
as  the  junction  of  the  Osage  with  the  Missouri  River,  which 
is  about  nine  hundred  miles  west  of  the  Ohio  River  at  Wheel- 
ing. The  white  population  has  within  the  last  thirty  years 
traveled  more  than  thirty  miles  in  each  year,  and  is  at  this 
time  advancing  with  as  great,  if  not  greater,  impetus  than  at 
any  former  period,  and  according  to  all  probability,  if  not 


58  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

checked  by  some  unforeseen  circumstance,  it  will  within  the 
next  thirty  years  reach  the  Rocky  Mountains,  or  even  the 
Pacific  Ocean. 

"  We  have,  therefore,  no  reason  to  look  for  any  falling 
off  in  this  trade,  but,  on  the  contrary,  for  an  increase  to  an 
extent  of  which  no  estimate  could  now  be  formed." 

This  first  formal  report  on  a  railroad  project  ever 
made  in  America  was  so  alluring  and  so  convincing 
that  the  project  was  unanimously  approved,  and 
J.  V.  L.  McMahon,  a  young  lawyer  only  twenty- 
seven  years  old,  was  appointed  to  draw  up  a  charter 
forthwith. 

When  the  pioneer  railroad  builders  reassembled  to 
pass  upon  the  document  the  young  lawyer  had  not 
read  half  through  its  twenty-three  sections  when  the 
venerable  Robert  Oliver,  astonishment  and  disap- 
proval stamped  on  every  feature,  arose  and  exclaimed: 

"Stop,  man;  you're  asking  for  more  than  the 
Lord's  Prayer! " 

"But  it's  all  necessary;  and  besides,  the  more  we 
ask  for  the  more  we'll  get,"  was  the  smiling  reply. 

"  Right,  man;  go  ahead,"  said  Oliver,  resuming  his 
seat. 

That  first  railroad  charter  ever  drawn  in  America 
was  so  skilfully  framed  that  it  has  served  as  a  model 
for  every  similar  document  drawn  since  then. 

Events  moved  swiftly.  Sixteen  days  after  that 
first  meeting  in  George  Brown's  house,  the  act  of  in- 
corporation of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  the 
first  organized  in  America,  was  passed  by  the  Mary- 
land legislature,  and,  April  24,  1827,  the  company 
was  organized,  with  P.  E.  Thomas,  the  man  who 
originated  the  idea,  as  president,  a  post  which  he 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  39 

filled  for  ten  years,  and  his  old  friend  and  business 
associate,  George  Brown,  as  treasurer. 

Everybody  in  Maryland  was  full  of  enthusiasm 
over  the  proposed  railroad,  as  was  shown  when  the 
books  were  opened  to  receive  subscriptions  for  stock. 
The  capital  was  fixed  at  three  million  dollars,  of 
which  five  hundred  thousand  dollars  was  to  be  fur- 
nished by  the  State  of  Maryland  and  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars  by  the  city  of  Baltimore.  Fifteen 
thousand  shares  were  allotted  to  the  public. 

When  the  books  were  closed,  at  the  end  of  twelve 
days,  it  was  found  that  the  entire  allotment  had 
been  subscribed  three  times  over  by  twenty-two  thou- 
sand individuals  in  Baltimore  alone.  Frederick  and 
Hagerstown,  also,  showed  a  proportionate  oversub- 
scription. 

Parties  of  engineers  were  put  into  the  field  as  soon 
as  they  could  be  organized.  Then,  having  arranged 
to  build  a  railroad,  a  committee  of  directors  was  sent 
to  try  to  get  some  idea  of  what  a  railroad  was  by  in- 
specting the  nine  miles  of  gravity  road  at  Mauch 
Chunk  and  the  three  miles  of  horse  road  at  the  granite 
quarries  at  Quincy. 

Not  being  much  enlightened  by  their  investiga- 
tion, they  recommended  that  a  committee  of  engi- 
neers be  sent  to  England  to  pick  up  a  few  pointers 
from  Stephenson's  Manchester  and  Liverpool  proj- 
ect. This  was  done  forthwith. 

It  was  not  until  the  5th  of  April,  1828,  that  the 
engineers  were  ready  to  make  their  report.  On  the 
4th  of  July,  1828,  there  was  the  most  imposing  pro- 
cession Baltimore  had  ever  seen  on  Independence 
Day. 


40  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

A  great  throng  assembled  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
city,  where,  after  music,  oratory  and  prayer,  Charles 
Carroll,  of  Carrollton,  then  ninety  years  old,  laid  the 
corner-stone  of  the  railroad.  When  he  had  relin- 
quished the  trowel  he  turned  to  President  Thomas 
and  said: 

"  I  consider  this  among  the  most  important  acts  of 
my  life,  second  only  to  the  signing  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  if  even  it  be  second  to  that." 

The  venerable  man  was  made  much  of  in  Balti- 
more. He  was  never  permitted  to  forget  that  he 
had  signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  Noth- 
ing of  importance  could  take  place  without  his  pres- 
ence. 

He  had  been  made  a  member  of  the  board  of  direct- 
ors of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad,  and  he  was 
always  present  at  the  experiments  by  which  the  pro- 
moters sought  to  solve  the  mystery  of  building  and 
operating  a  railroad. 

Ross  Winans,  publisher  of  the  Baltimore  Gazette 
and  a  director  of  the  road,  built  a  model  of  a  car, 
which  he  placed  on  a  few  feet  of  tiny  iron  rails  in  an 
upper  room  of  the  Exchange  Building.  To  show 
how  easy  it  was  to  pull  a  heavy  load  in  a  carriage  run- 
ning on  iron  rails,  one  end  of  a  cord  was  attached  to 
the  car,  while  the  other,  dangling  in  the  rotunda,  after 
being  passed  over  a  pulley,  had  a  small  weight  on  it. 

The  venerable  Charles  Carroll  was  invited  to  get 
into  the  car,  whereupon  the  small  weight  was  released 
and  promptly  drew  him  up  to  the  end  of  the  track, 
to  the  delight  of  the  board  of  directors,  who  stood 
about  as  pleased  as  children  with  a  new  toy. 

On  opening  bids  for  the  construction  of  the  first 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  41 

twelve  miles,  on  the  llth  of  August,  it  was  found 
that  the  first  section  would  cost  seventeen  thousand 
dollars  a  mile.  The  method  of  construction  that  was 
followed  would  seem  strange  now. 

After  the  ground  was  leveled  off,  two  holes,  twenty 
inches  wide,  two  feet  long,  and  two  feet  deep,  were 
dug  four  feet  apart.  These  were  filled  with  broken 
stone  of  a  size  to  pass  through  a  ring  two  and  a  half 
inches  in  diameter. 

Then  a  trench  six  inches  deep  from  one  hole  to  the 
other  was  dug  and  filled  with  broken  stone,  and  on 
this  a  cedar  sleeper  seven  feet  long  was  adjusted  with 
a  spirit-level.  Notches  were  cut  in  these  sleepers, 
into  which,  after  they  had  been  tested  with  the  spirit- 
level,  yellow  pine  stringers,  or  rails,  twelve  to  twenty- 
four  feet  long  and  six  inches  square,  were  carefully 
fitted  and  fastened  with  wedges. 

The  outer  edges  of  these  rails  were  beveled  to  make 
room  for  the  flanges  of  the  wheels,  for  it  was  intended 
that  the  car-wheels  should  have  flanges  on  the  out- 
side. When  a  thin  strap  of  iron  had  been  nailed  to 
the  wooden  sleeper  with  wrought-iron  nails  four 
inches  long  the  track  was  complete. 

After  several  miles  had  been  finished  in  this  way, 
slabs  of  granite  were  substituted  for  the  cedar 
sleepers. 

The  railroad  project  steadily  grew  in  popularity. 
People  gave  the  necessary  right  of  way,  and  the  priv- 
ilege of  using  quarries  to  get  the  needed  stone  free 
of  charge,  and  two  acres  for  a  station-site  were  do- 
nated at  Ellicott's  Mills,  thirteen  miles  from  Balti- 
more. 

So  keen  was  the  public  interest  that  when  the  rails 


42  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

were  laid  to  Vinegar  Hill,  seven  miles  from  Balti- 
more, a  couple  of  rude  horse-cars  were  put  on  to 
gratify  the  intensely  curious  with  a  ride  on  the  rail- 
road. 

But  even  with  the  free  right  of  way  and  oversub- 
scriptions of  stock  by  an  eager  public,  it  didn't  take 
those  pioneers  long  to  discover  that  they  had  sadly 
underestimated  the  cost  of  building  a  railroad. 
Scarcely  had  ground  been  broken  before  arrange- 
ments were  made  to  increase  the  capital  stock. 

One  million  five  hundred  thousand  dollars  was  allot- 
ted to  the  public,  while  the  indefatigable  McMahon, 
first  of  railroad  lawyers  and  second  in  ability  to  none 
who  have  come  after  him,  induced  the  State  of  Mary- 
land to  take  five  hundred  thousand  dollars  more.  An 
effort  to  get  a  donation  of  one  million  dollars  from 
the  United  States  Government  would  have  succeeded 
but  for  the  opposition  of  the  canal  lobby. 

Twenty-five  miles  of  grading  had  been  finished 
when  work  stopped  for  the  season  in  the  fall  of  1829. 
One  day  in  May,  1830,  the  Baltimore  Gazette  an- 
nounced that  a  "  brigade  of  cars  "  would  run  three 
times  a  day  on  the  new  railroad  from  Baltimore  to 
Ellicott's  Mills,  thirteen  miles  away,  every  week-day, 
beginning  Monday,  May  24. 

The  first  "  brigade,"  on  that  Monday  morning, 
started  off  at  nine  o'clock,  with  all  the  ceremony  be- 
fitting so  important  an  event.  The  brigade  was 
operated  by  one  horse.  The  mayor  of  Baltimore, 
members  of  the  city  council,  officers  of  the  road,  news- 
paper representatives,  and,  of  course,  Charles  Car- 
roll, of  Carrollton,  were  passengers  in  the  splendid 
car  "  Pioneer." 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  43 

Next  morning  the  papers  declared  that  this  first 
brigade  of  cars  on  the  new  railroad  had  at  times 
attained  the  "  extraordinary  rate  of  fifteen  miles  an 
hour."  Another  brigade  of  three  cars,  with  eighty 
passengers  on  board,  made  the  trip  at  an  average 
speed  of  eight  miles  an  hour. 

At  a  public  demonstration  of  the  prodigies  that 
could  be  performed  by  the  wonderful  new  railroad, 
an  exhibition  brigade  of  eight  cars  was  loaded  with 
two  hundred  barrels,  or  thirty  tons,  of  flour.  One 
horse  drew  the  brigade  a  distance  of  six  and  one-half 
miles  in  forty-six  minutes  outward  bound.  On  the 
return  from  Ellicott's  Mills  the  thirteen  miles  were 
covered  in  fifty-four  minutes,  and  the  demonstration 
was  voted  a  "  triumphant  success." 

In  their  inmost  hearts  the  officers  and  directors  of 
the  road  began  to  have  a  pretty  clearly  defined  fear 
that  the  demonstration  was  not  a  success.  The  sus- 
picion began  to  dawn  upon  them  that  "  brigades  "  of 
cars  drawn  by  horses  would  never  make  the  road 
profitable. 

They  were  continually  experimenting  with  new 
forms  of  motive  power.  Evan  Thomas,  brother  of 
the  president,  who  had  written  the  momentous  letter 
from  London,  out  of  which  grew  the  idea  of  the  road, 
placed  an  overgrown  clothes-basket  on  a  platform 
with  four  small  wheels,  rigged  a  mast  with  a  square 
sail,  and  found  he  had  a  vehicle  which  would  travel 
beautifully  before  the  wind. 

Baron  Krudener,  the  Russian  envoy,  came  up  from 
Washington  and  had  a  ride  in  the  sailing  car  which 
sent  him  into  such  raptures  that  he  begged  a  model 
to  send  to  the  Czar.  It  was  given  to  him,  and  this 


44  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

model,  being  duly  forwarded  to  Russia,  suggested  a 
train  of  thought  which  led  to  the  building  of  the  rail- 
road from  St.  Petersburg  to  Moscow,  just  as  the 
inventor's  letter  to  his  brother  had  inspired  the  idea 
of  building  a  great  railroad  in  America. 

But  as  the  sailing  car  could  only  be  used  when  the 
wind  was  abaft  the  beam,  it  very  soon  became  clear 
that  sails  could  not  be  adopted  for  motive  power  on 
a  railway. 

Then  another  inventive  genius  came  forward  with 
a  horse-power  of  the  treadmill  pattern,  such  as  is  used 
to-day  in  some  places  for  sawing  wood.  This  looked 
promising.  The  directors,  as  usual,  invited  some 
newspaper  men  to  go  with  them  on  the  trial  trip,  for 
they  realized  the  value  of  publicity. 

They  got  on  famously  for  a  few  miles,  until  they 
came  to  a  cow  on  the  track.  The  cow  declined  to 
yield  the  road  to  such  an  outrageous  contrivance  as 
the  horse-power  motor,  and  as  there  were  no  effective 
brakes,  the  train  ran  into  the  cow  and  spilled  the  out- 
fit into  the  ditch.  No  physical  injuries  were  sus- 
tained, but  the  incident  was  made  the  subject  of  such 
atrocious  puns  in  regard  to  the  "  cowing  "  of  the  edit- 
ors that  the  horse-motor  was  laughed  out  of  court. 

Locomotives  such  as  Stephenson  was  building  for 
the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Railway  in  England 
were  suggested,  but  the  word  came  that  Stephenson 
had  said  that  a  locomotive  could  not  run  on  curves 
of  a  radius  of  less  than  nine  hundred  feet,  and  there 
would  have  to  be  curves  of  four  hundred  feet  radius 
or  less  in  order  to  get  around  Point  of  Rocks. 

The  locomotive  idea  was  abandoned,  and  the  direct- 
ors were  on  the  point  of  giving  up  the  project  in 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  45 

despair,  when  aid  came  from  a  most  unexpected 
quarter. 

Peter  Cooper,  of  New  York,  afterward  famous  as 
a  philanthropist,  had  been  induced  to  buy  a  tract  of 
three  thousand  acres  of  land  as  a  speculation  on  the 
outskirts  of  Baltimore,  along  the  line  of  the  railroad, 
in  company  with  two  other  men.  Having  been  called 
upon  for  frequent  remittances  to  pay  taxes  and  other 
charges  he  became  suspicious  and  went  to  Baltimore 
to  investigate. 

He  found  that  he  had  been  sending  money  down  to 
support  his  partners ;  that,  not  to  put  too  fine  a  point 
upon  it,  he  was  being  swindled.  So  he  bought  the 
interest  of  the  other  two.  His  speculation  was  sure 
to  result  in  a  loss  unless  the  railroad  were  a  success; 
he  therefore  interested  himself  in  the  troubles  of  the 
directors. 

He  told  them  he  thought  he  could  knock  together 
a  locomotive  that  would  get  around  the  sharp  curves 
all  right.  He  owned  a  foundry,  was  handy  with 
tools,  and  had  a  knack  at  contriving. 

Going  back  to  New  York,  he  bought  an  engine  with 
a  cylinder  three  and  one-quarter  by  fourteen  and  one- 
half  inches,  and  returning  to  Baltimore,  got  some  iron 
and  built  a  boiler  about  as  large  as  a  good-sized  wash- 
boiler.  He  wanted  some  iron  pipes  for  boiler-flues, 
but  none  were  obtainable,  so  he  used  old  musket  bar- 
rels for  the  purpose. 

The  first  American  locomotive  was  built  in  a  car- 
riage maker's  shop.  However,  as  it  was  not  in- 
tended for  actual  service,  but  only  as  a  working  model 
to  show  the  directors  what  could  be  done,  first  honors 
properly  belong  to  the  Best  Friend  of  Charleston, 


46  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

which  was  built  for  regular  daily  operation,  although 
it  did  not  make  its  initial  trip  until  sixty-six  days  after 
Cooper's  locomotive  appeared,  as  recounted  in  the 
preceding  chapter.  Cooper's  working  model  was  so 
insignificant  in  appearance  that  he  christened  it  the 
"  Tom  Thumb." 

Steam  was  raised  for  the  first  time  one  Saturday 
night.  Everything  seemed  to  be  in  order,  so  the 
directors  were  invited  to  take  their  first  ride  on  the 
following  Monday  morning.  When  Monday  morn- 
ing came  Mr.  Cooper  found,  to  his  great  chagrin,  that 
a  thief  had  hacked  off  all  the  copper  parts  to  be  sold 
for  junk.  It  took  a  week  to  repair  the  damage. 

On  Saturday,  August  28,  1830,  with  six  men  on 
the  engine,  which  was  no  bigger  than  a  hand-car  of 
to-day,  and  thirty-six  men  on  a  car  attached,  the  first 
trip  by  an  American-built  locomotive  was  made.  The 
run  to  Ellicott's  Mills,  thirteen  miles,  up  an  average 
grade  of  eighteen  feet  to  the  mile,  required  one  hour 
and  twelve  minutes;  the  return  was  made  in  fifty- 
seven  minutes.  In  some  places  a  speed  of  eighteen 
miles  an  hour  was  reached. 

Some  members  of  the  party  took  out  their  note- 
books and  wrote  sentences  therein,  just  to  prove  that 
it  was  possible  to  do  so  while  traveling  at  such  tre- 
mendous speed.  Ross  Winans,  one  of  the  directors, 
estimated  the  weight  of  the  passengers  and  the 
amount  of  coal  and  water  used.  The  showing  made 
by  the  Tom  Thumb  was  unequaled  by  any  English 
locomotive  for  four  years  thereafter. 

It  may  not  be  amiss  at  this  point  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  American  railways  were  developed  entirely 
independent  of  the  English  by  calling  attention  to 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  47 

the  prior  invention  by  Cooper  of  two  fundamental 
features  of  all  locomotives — the  multitubular  boiler 
and  the  artificial  draft. 

Cooper's  boiler  tubes  made  of  musket  barrels  have 
already  been  mentioned.  The  air-blast  by  which  a 
forced  draft  was  secured  was  obtained  by  a  bellows 
worked  by  a  belt  from  the  axle  of  the  engine.  Ste- 
phenson  hit  upon  the  correct  principle  by  accident. 

The  exhaust  from  his  first  locomotives  frightened 
horses.  When  he  was  building  the  "  Rocket  "  he  was 
notified  by  the  police  that  if  he  kept  on  frightening 
horses  with  his  noisy  engines  he  would  be  arrested. 
He  turned  the  exhaust  into  the  smoke-stack  to  muffle 
the  noise,  and  found,  to  his  joy,  that  he  had  thereby 
provided  a  forced  draft. 

Cooper,  however,  eclipsed  Stephenson  on  every 
other  point.  At  the  famous  October  trials,  in  which 
Stephenson  won  the  prize  of  five  hundred  pounds 
offered  for  the  best  locomotive,  his  Rocket,  which  had 
two  cylinders,  eight  by  fifteen  inches,  developing  a 
trifle  less  than  six  horse-power,  pulled  seventeen  tons 
on  a  level  track  twelve  and  one-half  miles  an  hour. 

Cooper's  Tom  Thumb,  with  only  one  cylinder, 
three  and  one-fourth  by  fourteen  and  one-half  inches, 
developing  1.43  horse-power,  pulled  four  and  one- 
half  tons  up  an  eighteen-foot  grade  at  twelve  miles 
an  hour.  In  other  words,  Cooper's  locomotive  devel- 
oped more  than  three  times  as  much  power  as  Ste- 
phenson's  in  proportion  to  the  cylinder  capacity. 

Yet  the  Tom  Thumb  was  destined  to  suffer  humil- 
iation in  the  very  hour  of  its  triumph.  On  the  return 
from  Ellicott's  Mills  the  locomotive  was  met  at  the 
Relay  House,  half-way  to  Baltimore,  by  a  car  to 


48  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

which  was  hitched  the  finest  horse  that  Stockton  & 
Stokes,  the  stage-line  owners,  possessed.  It  was  a 
fine,  clean-limbed  young  gray. 

The  stage  proprietors  had  come  out  to  race  with 
the  locomotive.  Engine  and  horse  got  away  with  an 
even  start,  with  steam  hissing  from  every  joint  of  the 
roughly  built  locomotive.  Soon  the  locomotive  began 
to  pull  away  from  the  gray.  The  passengers  yelled 
and  the  driver  plied  his  whip,  but  the  horse  lost 
steadily. 

Just  as  the  driver  was  about  to  pull  up  and 
acknowledge  himself  beaten,  the  belt  which  worked 
the  blower  on  the  Tom  Thumb  slipped.  Without  a 
forced  draft,  the  steam  began  to  go  down  at  once. 
Mr.  Cooper  lacerated  his  hands  in  an  effort  to  work 
the  blower,  but  he  couldn't  do  it. 

The  horse  soon  forged  ahead,  and  won  the  race  by  a 
considerable  margin.  This  historic  race  was  run  just 
seventeen  days  before  the  opening  of  the  Manchester 
and  Liverpool  Railway,  in  England. 

In  spite  of  this  defeat,  the  locomotive  test  was  such 
an  unqualified  success  that  the  drooping  spirits  of  the 
directors  were  revived  and  the  confidence  of  the  public 
was  restored.  Railroad  stock  was  once  more  salable, 
and  Peter  Cooper  was  assured  of  an  ultimate  profit 
on  his  land  speculation. 

Convinced  by  the  performances  of  the  Tom  Thumb 
that  steam  would  solve  the  problem  of  the  railroad, 
the  directors  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  offered  a  prize 
of  four  thousand  dollars  for  the  most  approved  loco- 
motive delivered  to  them  before  June  1,  1831,  and 
three  thousand  five  hundred  dollars  for  the  next  best. 

It  was  specified  that  the  locomotives  must  burn 


1 


? 


1 

3* 

K* 


•s  „ 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  49 

coal,  carry  not  more  than  one  hundred  pounds  of 
steam,  weigh  not  more  than  three  and  a  half  tons,  be 
able  to  haul  fifteen  tons  fifteen  miles  an  hour  on  the 
level,  and  do  all  this  for  thirty  days  on  trial  before 
acceptance. 

The  only  locomotive  delivered  which  met  these  re- 
quirements was  the  "  York,"  built  by  Phineas  Davis. 
The  York  was  mounted  on  springs,  the  first  locomo- 
tive ever  so  equipped. 

This  at  once  suggested  an  idea  to  the  observant 
Ross  Winans.  Cars  up  to  that  time  had  been  built 
without  springs.  He  had  one  provided  with  springs, 
and  found  that  the  capacity  of  the  car  was  increased, 
while  it  was  easier  to  haul. 

Winans  also  soon  afterward  invented  an  anti- 
friction journal  and  conical  wheel,  with  the  flange 
inside,  which  reduced  the  friction  from  one-two-hun- 
dred-and-fortieth  part  of  the  weight  to  one-four- 
hundredth. 

After  a  controversy  which  nearly  rent  Baltimore 
asunder  the  railroad  was  granted  the  right  to  lay 
tracks  through  the  streets  to  the  water's  edge,  and  on 
to  Jones's  Falls,  where  the  city  donated  two  squares 
for  terminals. 

In  this  year  the  company  had  its  first  experience 
with  dishonest  contractors.  One  of  them  ran  away 
without  paying  his  men.  They  testified  to  their  re- 
sentment of  this  sort  of  treatment  by  a  determined 
attempt  to  destroy  the  road.  Not  until  the  militia 
had  been  called  out  and  some  sixty  of  the  leaders  in 
the  disturbance  had  been  placed  in  jail  was  the  riot 
quelled.  A  swindler  took  advantage  of  the  noto- 
riety this  episode  created  by  advertising  in  Boston 


50  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

for  laborers  for  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio.  After  col- 
lecting money  to  pay  passage  to  Baltimore  for  sev- 
eral scores  of  men  he  disappeared. 

When  on  April  1,  1832,  the  track  was  completed 
to  Point  of  Rocks,  on  the  Potomac,  seventy-two  miles 
from  Baltimore,  the  traffic  on  the  railroad  experi- 
enced its  first  real  boom. 

Farmers  found  that  they  could  make  money  by 
shipping  every  species  of  agricultural  products  over 
the  railroad  to  Baltimore,  while  such  articles  as  lime, 
paving-stone,  timber,  and  the  like,  hitherto  valueless, 
began  to  be  worth  money  when  transportation  became 
available.  Plaster  of  Paris,  coal,  brick,  and  many 
other  articles  were  shipped  into  the  interior,  where 
they  had  been  unknown  until  the  advent  of  the  rail- 
road. 

The  operation  of  the  first  seventy -two  miles  of  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  settled  for  all  time  the  question 
of  the  suitability  of  the  railroad  as  a  mode  of  trans- 
portation. 

In  the  first  two  and  a  half  years  that  the  road  was 
open  to  traffic  three  hundred  thousand  passengers 
were  carried  without  a  single  accident  to  life  or  limb. 

Up  to  that  time  the  railroad  had  been  regarded  as 
an  improved  form  of  toll-road,  as  was  indicated  by 
an  act  of  the  legislature  by  which  the  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  was  permitted  to  charge  tolls  not  to  exceed  one 
cent  per  ton  per  mile  and  three  cents  per  ton  per 
mile  for  transportation  on  west-bound  freight,  and 
not  more  than  three  cents  per  ton  per  mile  in  tolls 
and  three  cents  transportation  on  east-bound  freight. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  worthy  of  record  that  the  first 
drunken  man  in  history  to  go  to  sleep  on  a  railroad 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  51 

track  was  run  over  and  killed  near  Ellicott's  Mills  in 
November,  1832. 

Just  when  prospects  for  the  road  began  to  look 
really  bright  the  Court  of  Appeals  dealt  the  enter- 
prise a  severe  blow  in  the  form  of  a  decision  in  favor 
of  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Canal,  which  disputed 
the  right  to  occupy  the  narrow  valley  of  the  Potomac. 

The  canal  company  graciously  offered  to  let  the 
railroad  devote  its  resources  to  the  completion  of  the 
canal  if  all  idea  of  extending  the  road  were  aban- 
doned. This  generous  compromise  was  refused,  and 
work  on  the  road  came  to  a  standstill  until  the  legis- 
lature interfered  and  compelled  a  compromise  by 
which  the  railroad  was  to  take  two  thousand  five  hun- 
dred shares  of  canal  stock. 

Joint  construction  of  canal  and  railroad  was  to 
begin  after  May  10,  1833.  The  railroad  had  to  build 
a  fence  between  road  and  canal,  to  prevent  the  tow- 
horses  from  being  frightened  by  the  trains.  As  a 
further  concession  to  the  delicate  sensibilities  of  the 
canal  horses,  the  railroad  was  directed  to  haul  its 
trains  by  horses  through  the  passes  where  canal  and 
road  lay  side  by  side. 

But  the  fence  acted  as  a  dam  which  caught  the 
floods  sweeping  down  the  mountainsides,  and  the  Bal- 
timore and  Ohio  management  had  begun  to  realize 
that  a  railroad  could  not  be  operated  with  horses.  So 
there  was  still  further  delay  until  the  repeal  of  the 
obnoxious  law  could  be  secured. 

Meanwhile  the  stockholders  began  to  clamor  for 
dividends.  The  reply  of  the  board  of  directors  was 
a  demand  for  more  money  to  extend  the  road  to  Har- 
per's Ferry,  where  connection  could  be  made  with  the 


52  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Winchester  and  Potomac,  a  road  thirty  miles  long. 
The  payment  of  subscriptions  by  the  State  of  Mary- 
land and  the  city  of  Baltimore  provided  funds  for 
this  purpose,  and  the  extension  was  completed  Decem- 
ber 1,  1834.  The  business  of  the  road  received  an 
immediate  stimulus,  notwithstanding  an  era  of  hard 
times  had  caused  a  decline  in  business  throughout  the 
country. 

While  the  extension  was  being  built  the  indefat- 
igable Winans  had  constructed  a  car  mounted  on  four- 
wheeled  trucks  to  carry  sixty  passengers.  This  was 
the  progenitor  of  the  modern  passenger-coach.  Soon 
afterward  special  cars  were  provided  for  baggage, 
which  hitherto  had  been  carried  in  racks  on  the  top  of 
the  coaches. 

The  evolution  of  the  car  was  comparatively  more 
rapid  than  the  development  of  the  locomotive.  The 
first  cars  on  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  were  like  market 
carts  on  flanged  wheels.  The  next  were  like  a  stage 
coach  with  the  old-time  leathern  braces  and  C  springs, 
with  a  capacity  of  nine  passengers  inside  and  outside. 
For  some  time  these  were  the  fashion.  They  were 
gaudily  painted  and  decorated  and  in  winter  were 
lined  with  green  baize  curtains,  while  the  seats  were 
arranged  around  the  sides  instead  of  crosswise. 
Whenever  Richard  Imlay,  the  leading  coach  builder 
of  Baltimore,  achieved  a  new  triumph  in  railroad 
cars,  it  was  exhibited  in  Monument  Square  for  the 
admiration  of  the  public. 

Winans'  first  eight-wheeled  car  was  named  the 
"  Columbus."  It  was  merely  a  large  box  with  seats 
on  top,  as  well  as  inside,  reached  by  a  ladder  at  one 
corner.  The  Columbus  was  followed  by  some  ex- 


TYPE  OF  PASSENGER  CAR  USED  ON  THE  BALTIMORE  AND 

OHIO   IN   1829 


- 


*  * 


TYPE     OF     "BURDEN"     OR    FREIGHT    CAR    USED    ON    THE 
BALTIMORE     AND     OHIO     IN     1832. 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  53 

traordinary  freaks  which  were  nicknamed  the  "  Sea 
Serpent,"  the  "Dromedary,"  and  the  like.  Still, 
each  had  some  redeeming  feature  which  was  preserved 
in  its  successor.  Then  came  the  "  Winchester,"  and 
finally  the  "  Washington,"  which  approximated  the 
passenger  coach  of  to-day.  When  the  designs  for  the 
eight-wheeled  cars  were  submitted  to  the  board  of 
directors  there  was  a  long  discussion  before  they 
could  decide  whether  to  have  an  aisle  down  the  center 
of  the  car  or  to  have  a  narrow  ledge  on  the  outside, 
in  the  English  style,  for  the  conductor.  The  advo- 
cates of  the  center  aisle  finally  carried  the  day,  and 
the  American  type  of  car,  which  has  only  recently 
been  discovered  by  the  English  railroads,  was  given 
to  the  world. 

John  Elgar  had  meanwhile  invented  switches,  turn- 
tables, chilled-steel  bearings,  and  other  devices.  Up 
to  July,  1834,  the  company  had  but  three  locomotives, 
and  many  cars,  especially  freight,  were  still  drawn  by 
horses.  By  the  time  Harper's  Ferry  was  reached  five 
more  locomotives  had  been  received  and  eight  more 
were  under  contract. 

While  the  main  line  was  creeping  slowly  and  pain- 
fully westward,  a  branch  line  under  the  name  of  the 
Baltimore  and  Washington  Railroad  was  under  con- 
struction to  the  National  Capital.  Like  the  parent 
company,  the  Baltimore  and  Washington  Railroad 
was  the  idea  of  Philip  E.  Thomas.  It  was  his  per- 
sonal energy  and  perseverance  that  led  the  fierce  fight 
through  three  sessions  of  the  Maryland  legislature, 
which  finally  ended  in  the  rout  of  a  strong  lobby  led 
by  the  Philadelphia,  Washington,  and  Baltimore 
Turnpike  Company.  The  advent  of  the  railroad 


54  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

meant  the  death  of  the  turnpike.  It  was  a  struggle 
for  survival  which  was  won,  as  generally  happens,  by 
the  fittest.  The  act  incorporating  the  railroad  be- 
came a  law  March  9, 1833.  The  struggle  for  aid  from 
the  National  Government  was  less  successful,  for  the 
canal  lobby  at  Washington  was  powerful  enough  to 
defeat  in  the  House  the  bill  which  had  already  passed 
the  Senate  appropriating  three  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars  to  help  the  railroad  out. 

Work  was  begun  at  once  on  the  Patapsco  Bridge, 
plans  for  which  had  already  been  prepared  by  the 
chief  engineer,  B.  H.  Latrobe.  This  bridge  of  eight 
arches  of  fifty-eight  feet  span  each  was  the  largest 
in  the  United  States  in  its  day,  and  was  regarded  as  a 
very  remarkable  engineering  feat. 

On  this  Washington  branch  even  more  than  the 
average  amount  of  trouble  was  encountered.  One  of 
the  most  annoying  difficulties  was  that  of  obtaining 
sober,  law-abiding  labor.  By  attempting  to  enforce 
reasonable  discipline,  the  deputy  superintendents  of 
construction  incurred  the  hatred  of  the  more  turbulent 
spirits. 

The  principal  cause  of  the  trouble  was  whisky, 
then  cheap  and  abundant.  Caspar  Wever,  the  first 
superintendent  of  construction,  in  his  annual  reports 
urged,  and  so  far  as  lay  in  his  power  compelled,  total 
abstinence  by  all  employees  of  the  company.  Still, 
riot  and  disorder  as  the  result  of  drunkenness  in- 
creased so  much  that  after  1829  Wever,  with  the 
knowledge  and  approval  of  President  Thomas,  re- 
fused to  sign  any  contracts  for  masonry  or  "  gradua- 
tion," as  grading  was  called  for  many  years,  that  did 
not  contain  a  clause  prohibiting  the  use  of  intoxicat- 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  55 

ing  liquors  on  the  work.  Thus  it  may  be  seen  that 
the  fight  of  the  railroad  against  intemperance,  which 
has  attracted  so  much  attention  in  recent  years,  is  as 
old  as  the  railroad  itself.  But  the  company  found 
itself  unable  to  enforce  the  prohibition  clause  in  its 
contracts. 

On  November  12,  1834,  Contractor  John  Gorman, 
John  Watson,  his  superintendent,  and  several  others 
were  attacked  in  a  shanty  by  a  number  of  laborers 
and  beaten  into  insensibility.  The  following  night 
the  shanty  door  was  battered  down  and  Watson  and 
William  Mercer  were  dragged  out  and  shot  to  death. 
John  Gallon  was  also  shot  and  left  for  dead,  but  ulti- 
mately recovered,  and  several  others  of  the  office 
force  and  foremen  were  badly  hurt. 

A  general  riot  followed  this  outrage,  in  which  a 
great  many  heads  were  broken.  All  the  stores  in  the 
vicinity  were  looted.  Next  day  the  militia,  under 
Lieutenant  Colonel  Campbell,  was  rushed  to  the 
scene.  Four  hundred  men  were  placed  under  arrest. 
At  the  preliminary  examination,  December  9,  all  but 
ten  were  discharged  from  custody.  Of  the  ten  one 
was  found  guilty  of  murder  in  the  first  degree;  the 
others  were  convicted  of  manslaughter  and  sentenced 
to  the  penitentiary  for  various  terms. 

Next  March  the  trouble  broke  out  anew  in  a  gen- 
eral strike.  Men  were  readily  secured  to  take  the 
places  of  the  strikers,  but  the  attempt  to  set  them  to 
work  was  the  signal  for  a  general  riot.  Once  more 
the  militia  came  to  the  rescue  and  drove  away  the 
rioters. 

The  branch  was  completed  and  thrown  open  to 
traffic  with  an  excursion  to  Washington,  August  25, 


56  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

1835.  Seventeen  cars,  each  containing  fifty  invited 
guests,  drawn  by  the  locomotives  "  George  Washing- 
ton," "  John  Adams,"  "  Thomas  Jefferson,"  and 
"  James  Madison,"  left  Baltimore  at  9  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  At  Bladensburg  a  trainload  of  public 
functionaries  and  other  invited  guests  from  Wash- 
ington was  met.  All  hands  alighted  while  the  mayor 
of  Washington  and  the  president  of  the  company 
exchanged  felicitations.  Proceeding  to  Washington, 
the  visitors  were  received  with  salvos  of  artillery  and 
cheers  from  what  seemed  to  be  the  entire  population 
of  the  Capital  and  the  surrounding  country.  After 
listening  to  some  long  speeches  the  guests  were  taken 
to  some  of  the  principal  points  of  interest.  The  re- 
turn trip  to  Baltimore  was  accomplished  in  two  hours 
and  twenty  minutes. 

It  was  this  branch  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  which 
achieved  the  distinction  of  initiating  the  modern  sys- 
tem of  mail  transportation.  Under  a  contract  signed 
in  January,  1838,  the  Baltimore  and  Washington  and 
the  Philadelphia,  Wilmington  and  Baltimore  began 
carrying  the  mails  between  Washington  and  Phila- 
delphia. 

An  epoch-making  feat  in  fast  news  carrying  was 
accomplished  on  the  Baltimore  and  Washington 
branch  in  1838,  which  attracted  a  great  deal  of  atten- 
tion. In  December  of  that  year  Conductor  Wilde, 
the  oldest  and  most  reliable  man  on  the  road,  was 
commissioned  by  the  board  of  directors  to  secure 
copies  of  the  President's  message  at  the  earliest  pos- 
sible moment  and  deliver  them  in  Baltimore  as 
quickly  as  possible.  Careful  preparations  had  been 
made  long  in  advance  for  the  exploit,  which  was  ex- 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  57 

pected  to  do  much  to  advertise  the  railroad  as  a  means 
of  quick  communication. 

On  reaching  the  station  Wilde  found  the  locomo- 
tive "  William  Cooke  "  waiting  for  him,  with  steam 
roaring  from  her  safety  valve.  The  instant  his  foot 
touched  the  step  the  engineer  opened  the  throttle,  and 
at  1:18  P.M.  the  William  Cooke  started  out  to  make 
a  famous  record.  One  hour  and  thirteen  minutes 
later  the  locomotive  came  to  a  halt  at  the  Baltimore 
station.  Wilde  sprang  to  the  platform  and  handed  a 
packet  to  a  waiting  messenger  from  the  Philadelphia, 
Wilmington  and  Baltimore,  and  another  to  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  Baltimore  and  Susquehanna.  Both 
locomotives  pulled  out  simultaneously,  the  one  for 
Philadelphia  reaching  that  point  at  6:07  P.M.  The 
message  was  delivered  in  New  York  at  11:15  P.M., 
or  ten  hours  for  a  run  of  225  miles.  Limited  trains 
now  cover  that  route  in  five  hours ;  but  this  is  no  such 
feat  as  covering  the  crazy  track  by  the  crude  locomo- 
tives of  that  early  day  in  ten  hours.  The  steamer  John 
W.  Richmond  was  waiting  at  New  York,  chartered 
by  the  Boston  Globe,  to  take  copies  of  the  message 
to  that  city.  The  copies  sent  over  the  Baltimore  and 
Susquehanna  reached  York,  Pa.,  from  which  point 
they  were  rushed  forward  to  Harrisburg,  Pa.,  by 
pony  express  in  two  hours  and  twenty-eight  minutes 
from  the  time  of  leaving  Baltimore. 

Reconnaissances  by  the  engineers  showed  that  the 
mountains  could  be  passed  by  locomotives  to  Wheeling 
and  Pittsburg,  so  the  board  of  directors  in  1837  rec- 
ommended the  extension  of  the  line  to  Cumberland, 
at  a  cost  of  four  million  six  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
The  State  came  to  the  rescue  with  a  subscription  of 


58  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

three  million  dollars,  and  Baltimore  took  a  like 
amount.  But  the  money  was  not  available. 

Trouble  now  began  to  thicken  for  the  enterprise 
which  had  started  out  so  brilliantly  a  decade  before. 
The  directors  were  destined  to  learn  from  bitter  ex- 
perience what  so  many  boards  have  learned  over  again 
since — that  building  a  railroad  on  paper  is  a  vastly 
different  matter  from  its  construction  on  the  ground. 

When  Louis  McLane  succeeded  P.  E.  Thomas  as 
president,  in  April,  1837,  he  found  that  the  cost  of 
construction  had  exceeded  the  capital  paid  in  by  the 
tidy  sum  of  two  hundred  and  three  thousand  dollars, 
which  had  been  raised  by  notes.  There  was  not  a 
dollar  in  the  treasury  to  meet  these  notes. 

Money  was  urgently  needed  to  rebuild  the  crude 
and  inadequate  experimental  road  that  had  been  con- 
structed in  the  beginning  to  meet  the  necessities  of  the 
growing  traffic.  There  was  no  school  but  experience 
in  which  to  learn  the  science  of  railroad-building. 

There  had  been  many  mistaken  economies  in  con- 
struction, and  many  inadequate  estimates  of  cost  of 
building  through  unfavorable  territory.  New  roll- 
ing-stock was  also  needed.  Moreover,  the  time  limit 
on  their  franchises  for  the  extension  was  about  to 
expire. 

The  company's  credit  was  not  good,  and  the  State 
bonds,  with  which  the  State's  subscription  of  three 
million  dollars  had  been  paid,  could  not  be  sold  in 
Europe  because  of  the  glut  of  American  securities, 
and  also  because  of  certain  repudiation  acts  by  sev- 
eral States,  including  Maryland. 

Confronted  with  the  necessity  of  extending  the  road 
in  the  face  of  these  overwhelming  difficulties,  the  ex- 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  59 

pedient  was  adopted  of  paying  bills  for  right  of  way, 
labor,  and  so  on  in  certificates  for  from  one  dollar  to 
one  hundred  dollars,  redeemable  in  Baltimore  city 
six  per  cent  stock  at  par,  to  the  amount  of  three 
million  dollars,  which  the  city  had  subscribed  toward 
the  extension.  But  Baltimore  city  stock  was  unsala- 
ble, so  the  working  men  into  whose  hands  these  certifi- 
cates found  their  way  lost  heavily,  but  the  road  was 
put  through  to  Cumberland,  one  hundred  and  sev- 
enty-eight miles  from  Baltimore,  on  the  5th  of  No- 
vember, 1842. 

The  effect  of  the  extension  was  manifested  in  an 
increase  of  earnings  from  three  hundred  and  ninety- 
one  thousand  and  seventy  dollars  the  year  before 
reaching  Cumberland  to  five  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  thousand  two  hundred  and  thirty-five  dollars  the 
year  afterward,  and  to  six  hundred  and  fifty-eight 
thousand  six  hundred  and  nineteen  dollars  in  1844, 
notwithstanding  a  reduction  in  passenger  rates  en- 
forced by  the  completion  of  the  Pennsylvania  lines. 

President  McLane  went  to  Europe  in  1844  to  try 
to  raise  the  money  for  extending  the  road  to  the 
Ohio  River.  He  failed  in  this,  but  he  brought  home 
many  valuable  ideas  on  improved  methods  of  organi- 
zation, division  of  labor,  more  adequate  accounta- 
bility, better  forms  of  tickets,  and  checks  on  conduct- 
ors and  agents,  which  he  at  once  put  into  use. 

In  1846  it  became  absolutely  necessary  to  recon- 
struct the  entire  eighty-one  miles  of  road  from  Bal- 
timore to  Harper's  Ferry  and  lay  the  new  edge-rail 
in  place  of  the  antiquated  plate-rail,  money  or  no 
money.  This  was  accomplished  by  selling  bonds  at 
ten  per  cent  discount. 


60  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Construction  to  the  Ohio  River  was  delayed  for 
seven  years.  In  1848,  Thomas  Swann,  a  brilliant 
financier  and  an  administrator  of  rare  executive 
ability  and  indefatigable  energy,  was  elected  presi- 
dent. In  his  first  speech  he  wrought  the  board  of 
directors  up  to  such  a  pitch  that  George  Brown 
jumped  up  in  great  excitement  and  said: 

"  Mr.  President,  I  move  that  the  chief  engineer  be 
instructed  to  put  the  entire  line  to  the  Ohio  River 
under  contract  as  speedily  as  possible." 

Swann's  first  coup  was  to  dispose  of  one  million 
dollars  of  the  unsalable  State  bonds  to  Baring  Broth- 
ers, the  great  London  bankers.  This  at  once  pro- 
vided both  funds  and  prestige,  which  made  possible 
the  building  of  the  remaining  two  hundred  miles 
through  the  mountains  to  Wheeling,  on  the  Ohio. 

The  line  was  located  through  the  roughest  region 
yet  traversed  by  any  internal  improvement  in  Amer- 
ica. Even  engineers  were  astonished.  Between 
Cumberland  and  Wheeling  there  were  eleven  tunnels 
with  a  total  length  of  11,156  feet,  and  113  bridges 
with  a  total  length  of  7,003  feet,  including  the  Monon- 
gahela  viaduct,  650  feet  long,  then  the  longest  iron 
bridge  in  America. 

President  Swann  declared  after  the  road  was 
opened  that  "  if  the  people  of  Baltimore  had  known 
at  the  commencement  of  the  work  west  of  Cumber- 
land what  the  difficulties  to  be  encountered  really 
were  we  would  have  been  locked  up  as  lunatics." 
Even  Swann  himself  must  have  had  his  misgivings, 
for  he  once  confessed  in  a  speech  that  when  the  open- 
ing of  the  section  from  Cumberland  to  Piedmont 
was  celebrated  in  1851  with  a  formidable  excursion 


THE  FIRST  "CAMEL"   BUILT  BY  ROSS  WINANS, 

A  type  of  locomotives  that  played  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  early  success 
of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio. 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  61 

to  which  all  the  dignitaries  of  Baltimore  and  the  State 
of  Maryland  were  invited,  he  took  care  to  stand  near 
an  open  car  door,  where  escape  to  the  woods  would  be 
easy,  while  Chief  Engineer  Latrobe  rode  on  the  en- 
gine, where  the  smoke  would  hide  his  mortification 
in  case  the  locomotive  should  prove  to  be  incapable 
of  climbing  the  grade  of  one  hundred  and  sixteen 
feet  to  the  mile. 

Fortunately  the  precautions  of  the  president  and 
chief  engineer  proved  to  be  unnecessary,  for  loco- 
motive No.  71,  built  by  Ross  Winans,  the  indefati- 
gable inventor  and  locomotive  builder,  took  four 
heavily  laden  coaches  and  five  cars  of  rails  to  the  top 
of  the  hill  without  difficulty,  a  feat  which  was  ac- 
knowledged by  the  enthusiastic  cheers  of  the  party. 
Without  Winans  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad 
could  hardly  have  been  built;  for  it  was  his  fertility 
in  resource  which  supplied  the  motive  power  to  meet 
peculiarly  difficult  conditions.  As  the  head  of  the 
great  shops  at  Mount  Clare,  near  Baltimore,  he  in- 
troduced many  details  that  helped  to  make  the  early 
locomotive  efficient,  and  finally  evolved  an  entirely 
new  type  that  enabled  the  heavy  mountain  grades  to 
be  overcome.  This  was  the  "  Camel,''  so-called  be- 
cause the  cab  was  perched  upon  the  top  of  the  boiler 
like  the  ungainly  hump  on  the  animal  after  which  it 
was  named.  The  entire  weight  of  the  Camel  was 
carried  on  four  pairs  of  drivers,  so  that  every  pound 
of  weight  was  available  for  tractive  force.  The 
Camel  was  inconceivably  ugly,  but  it  did  wonderful 
service  on  the  sharp  curves  and  steep  grades  of  the 
Alleghanies.  For  years  it  was  the  favorite  type  of 
engine  on  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio,  one  hundred  and 


62  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

nineteen  being  built,  and  its  performances  were  not 
surpassed  by  the  locomotives  of  any  other  builder. 

The  most  remarkable  performance  credited  to  the 
Camel  was  achieved  on  the  temporary  track  over  the 
mountain  while  the  Kingwood  tunnel  was  building. 
This  temporary  track  had  a  grade  of  five  hundred 
and  thirty  feet  to  the  mile.  It  was  so  steep  that 
sometimes  when  the  rails  were  slippery  with  frost  the 
Camel,  after  getting  part  way  up,  would  slip,  and 
then,  with  locked  wheels,  would  slide  all  the  way 
down  to  the  bottom  of  the  grade.  Only  one  car 
could  be  taken  up  at  a  time,  yet  by  this  laborious 
method  material  was  conveyed  over  the  mountain  for 
the  extension  of  the  line  without  waiting  for  the  tun- 
nel to  be  completed,  in  order  to  get  the  road  into 
Wheeling  on  schedule  time. 

Chief  Engineer  B.  H.  Latrobe  had  promised  in 
1851  to  have  trains  running  into  Wheeling  by  Jan- 
uary 1,  1853.  The  last  rail  was  laid  on  December 
24,  1852,  and  on  January  1,  1853,  the  first  train 
rolled  into  Wheeling.  The  veteran  chief  engineer 
declared  that  he  was  prouder  of  this  than  he  was  of 
his  triumphs  over  the  difficulties  in  the  mountains. 

Of  course  the  completion  of  the  road  to  the  Ohio 
had  to  be  celebrated  with  something  more  than  the 
customary  splendor.  Accordingly  the  legislatures  of 
Maryland  and  Virginia,  led  by  their  respective  Gov- 
ernors and  supported  by  the  city  officials  of  Balti- 
more, the  directors  of  the  road,  and  all  the  citizens 
sufficiently  distinguished  to  secure  invitations,  mak- 
ing a  grand  total  of  something  more  than  four  hun- 
dred persons,  left  Baltimore  Monday,  January  10, 
1853,  for  Wheeling  in  two  trains.  Dinner  was 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  63 

served  by  a  Baltimore  caterer  en  route  in  two  new 
cars,  in  which  temporary  board  tables  had  been  laid 
lengthwise  of  the  cars.  This,  the  first  appearance 
of  the  dining  car  on  any  road,  was  duly  appreciated 
by  the  dignitaries  in  whose  honor  it  was  devised. 

The  party  arrived  at  Fairmount,  seventy-seven 
miles  east  of  Wheeling,  at  9  o'clock  Tuesday  morn- 
ing. Near  this  point  a  broken  axle  delayed  the  spe- 
cial trains  so  long  that  Board  Tree  Tunnel,  near 
Wheeling,  was  not  reached  until  dusk.  As  the  tun- 
nel was  not  completed,  trains  were  run  over  the  sum- 
mit on  a  switchback  railroad  two  miles  and  a  quarter 
long  and  having  grades  of  293  to  340  feet  to  the 
mile.  Ten  extra  engines  were  waiting  at  the  eastern 
end  of  the  switchback,  for  one  engine  could  take  but 
two  cars  over  the  mountain.  The  darkness,  the  noise 
of  so  many  snorting  locomotives,  and  the  frail  look- 
ing railroad  clinging  to  the  steep  mountainside  and 
spanning  awe-inspiring  gorges,  was  too  much  for  the 
nerves  of  men  unused  to  railroad  travel.  A  large 
portion  of  the  guests  got  out  and  stumbled  on  foot 
through  the  darkness  over  the  mountain  rather  than 
trust  their  lives  in  such  unfamiliar  conveyances. 

Just  how  the  "  appalling  enterprise  of  transport- 
ing five  hundred  human  beings  fastened  up  in  rail- 
road cars  right  over  the  summits  of  Old  Alleghany  " 
impressed  those  pioneer  passengers  is  vividly  set 
forth  in  the  following  account  penned  by  a  newspaper 
correspondent  accompanying  the  party: 

"  It  was  a  day — and  especially  a  night — of  great  excite- 
ment and  interest,  more  particularly  as  connected  with  the 
passing  of  Pettibone  Mountain.  Here  the  great  tunnel  is 


64  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

being  cut  through  the  deep  bowels  of  one  of  the  most  romantic 
of  mountains.  It  will  be,  inclusive  of  cuts,  from  seven- 
eighths  to  a  mile  long.  The  tunnel  not  being  finished  the 
mountain  is  scaled  to  the  very  summit  in  despite  of  its 
rugged  frowning  sides,  by  means  of  a  track  laid  over  it. 
This  feature  of  the  road  is  stupendous  in  its  conception  and 
wonderful  in  its  execution.  The  summit  is  gained  by  a 
series  of  counter  Y  movements.  Of  course  the  grades  are 
steep  and  require  great  locomotive  power,  one  of  the  largest 
class  of  engines  ever  yet  operated  on  any  railroad  being 
required  to  carry  up  two  cars. 

"  But  the  scene  was  grand.  We  were  composed  of  ten 
caravans,  each  attached  to  one  of  the  most  powerful  engines. 
I  was  in  the  third ;  and  night  was  settling  down  on  the  broad 
landscape  as  we  began  the  ascent.  Before  us  were  two 
parties  slowly  climbing  their  zigzag  way  far  above  us  upon 
different  elevations  and  their  panting  iron  horses,  as  if  angry 
with  their  loads,  spit  out  volumes  of  black  smoke  and  sparks 
against  the  blackened  sky  as  from  the  crater  of  a  de.ep 
volcano. 

"  The  summit  gained  we  halted  a  short  time,  which  gave 
us  an  opportunity  to  survey  the  picture.  What  a  magnificent 
scene !  Around  and  beneath  us  were  the  stupendous  hills,  far 
as  the  lurid  shadows  of  evening  could  be  pierced,  while  far 
down  the  mountainside  from  terrace  upon  terrace  the  upheav- 
ing locomotives  glowed;  and  then  away  in  the  deep  valleys 
hundreds  of  torches  gleamed  from  the  hands  of  workmen 
leaving  their  allotted  task  in  the  depths  of  the  tunnel  below. 
We  now  descended  the  western  slope,  which  is  more  precipitous 
than  the  eastern.  Below  us  gleamed  the  serpentine  way  and 
in  our  turn  we  looked  up  to  those  behind  us.  It  seemed  as  if 
the  children  of  Babel  were  winding  down  from  the  huge 
mountain  pile.  The  locomotive  screamed,  to  us  an  unmean- 
ing sound,  while  the  deep  dells  below  threw  it  back  in  echoing 
mockery.  But  skilful  were  our  pilots,  as  we  seemed  to  swim 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  65 

along  the  mountainside,  and  in  a  few  hours  we  were  landed 
without  a  scratch  on  a  solid  rail  below. 

"  Many  of  our  party  were  in  an  ecstasy  of  delight  and 
enjoyment;  but  others,  more  fearful,  walked  the  crooked  way, 
while  some  who  remained  on  the  cars  trembled  like  the  aspen 
leaf." 

As  it  was  midnight  and  rain  was  falling  in  tor- 
rents when  the  jaded  excursionists,  with  nerves 
shaken  by  their  terrifying  passage  of  the  mountain, 
arrived  at  the  end  of  their  journey,  the  triumphal 
march,  banquet,  and  oratory  which  the  citizens  of 
Wheeling  had  planned  for  their  guests  had  all  to  be 
postponed  until  next  day. 

Regular  train  service  between  Chesapeake  Bay 
and  the  Ohio  River  was  established  at  last.  The  rail- 
road that  had  been  begun  and  operated  with  horses 
less  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  by  men  who 
had  no  conception  of  what  a  railroad  should  be  now 
owned  139  locomotives,  96  passenger  cars,  and  2,567 
freight  cars. 

But  if  the  originators  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio 
Railroad  had  no  idea  of  what  a  railroad  should  be, 
events  abundantly  confirmed  their  estimate  of  its 
value  in  developing  traffic,  as  a  few  samples  will  show. 

Before  1842  the  rich  coal  deposits  of  western  Mary- 
land were  worked  only  at  Frostburg,  a  hamlet  where 
a  few  hundred  bushels  of  coal  were  dug  and  floated 
down  the  Potomac  to  Alexandria  in  flatboats.  Boat 
and  cargo  were  sold,  and  the  crew  walked  home. 

In  1843,  the  first  year  after  the  railroad  reached 
Cumberland,  4,964  tons  of  coal  were  shipped  by  rail. 
In  1850  the  amount  had  increased  to  132,534  tons. 
Three  hundred  and  fifty-three  tons  of  grain  were 


66  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

shipped  over  the  road  in  1832;  in  1852,  5,000  tons 
were  transported. 

But  Wheeling  was  not  a  satisfactory  terminus.  In 
order  to  get  the  benefit  of  Western  traffic,  it  was  nec- 
essary to  strike  the  Ohio  River  farther  down.  The 
Northwestern  Virginia  Railroad  was  chartered  in 
1851,  to  build  from  Graf  ton,  on  the  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  Railroad,  to  Parkersburg,  on  the  Ohio  River. 

Mr.  Swann  was  president  of  the  company,  and  its 
bonds  were  guaranteed  by  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio 
and  the  city  of  Baltimore.  May  1,  1857,  the  line  was 
completed,  and  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  assumed  man- 
agement of  one  hundred  and  three  miles  of  the  best- 
constructed  railroad  in  the  country  up  to  that  time. 

The  maximum  grades  were  fifty-two  feet  to  the 
mile,  and  the  sharpest  curves  were  of  one  thousand 
feet  radius.  There  were  twenty-three  tunnels  on  the 
line,  the  longest  being  two  thousand  seven  hundred 
feet. 

The  simultaneous  opening,  on  June  1,  of  this  line 
from  Baltimore  to  the  Ohio  at  Parkersburg,  of  the 
Marietta  and  Cincinnati  Railroad  from  a  point  nearly 
opposite  Parkersburg  to  Cincinnati,  and  of  the  Ohio 
and  Mississippi  from  Cincinnati  to  St.  Louis,  com- 
pleted a  through  line  by  which  a  passenger  could  go 
from  New  York  to  St.  Louis  by  changing  cars  not 
more  than  five  times  and  making  two  short  steamboat 
voyages  and  two  ferry  trips. 

To  continue  his  westward  journey  from  Parkers- 
burg the  traveler  on  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  embarked 
on  a  steamboat  which  struggled  twelve  miles  up  the 
yellow  current  of  the  Ohio  to  Marietta.  From  this 
point  the  Marietta  and  Cincinnati,  organized  August 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  67 

18,  1847,  at  Chillicothe,  the  original  capital  of  Ohio, 
and  built  by  donations  from  towns  and  counties  aggre- 
gating two  million  and  fifty  thousand  dollars,  ex- 
tended one  hundred  and  ninety-six  miles  to  Cincin- 
nati. 

The  first  road  projected  between  Cincinnati  and  St. 
Louis  was  chartered  in  1832.  Though  some  sub- 
scriptions were  paid  in,  no  work  was  done.  The 
country  was  so  new  and  so  poor  that  so  great  an 
undertaking  was  absurdly  impracticable.  Sixteen 
years  later  the  project  was  revived  by  a  new  com- 
pany under  the  name  of  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi 
Railroad.  Preliminary  surveys  were  begun  November 
1,  1848.  The  first  section  of  twenty-six  miles  from 
Cincinnati  to  Cochraii  was  opened  April  2,  1854.  A 
connection  with  the  Cincinnati  and  Indianapolis  Rail- 
road at  the  latter  point  gave  the  road  a  considerable 
traffic  at  once.  Before  the  end  of  the  year  the  rails 
had  been  extended  to  Seymour,  Ind.,  eighty-seven 
miles  from  Cincinnati. 

Ground  was  broken  on  the  western  end  of  the  road 
February  9,  1852.  Page  &  Bacon,  of  St.  Louis, 
the  contractors,  found  themselves  unable  to  sell  the 
securities  of  the  road  as  they  had  anticipated,  so  they 
were  obliged  to  carry  on  the  work  solely  on  their  own 
resources.  In  1854  the  contractors  on  the  eastern  end 
failed,  and  Page  &  Bacon  assumed  the  contract. 
The  burden  of  building  the  entire  road  swamped  the 
plucky  contractors  and  forced  them  to  suspend  in 
January,  1855.  The  Ohio  and  Mississippi  became  a 
jest  and  a  by- word. 

But  with  a  courage  and  energy  that  have  not  been 
surpassed  in  the  history  of  the  railroad,  H.  D.  Bacon 


68  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

contrived  to  raise  a  half -million  dollars  and  completed 
the  western  division  to  Vincennes.  Then  the  road 
was  sold  under  foreclosure  proceedings  and  bought 
in  by  Page  &  Bacon,  who  held  $2,700,000  of  its 
securities.  Then  a  syndicate  of  New  York  capitalists, 
headed  by  W.  H.  Aspinwall,  bought  out  the  plucky 
contractors,  and  finished  the  road.  When  the  last 
spike  was  driven  it  was  found  that  the  road  had  cost 
twenty  million  dollars  instead  of  six  millions,  the  orig- 
inal estimate.  This  was  not  due  to  high  finance  or 
faulty  construction  that  had  to  be  replaced;  but  was 
simply  the  result  of  inexperience  in  railroad  building. 
The  Ohio  and  Mississippi,  like  the  Erie,  was  of  six 
feet  gauge. 

Such  an  event  as  the  completion  of  a  through  route 
from  New  York  and  Baltimore  to  St.  Louis  was  con- 
sidered worthy  of  a  great  National  celebration,  which 
was  accordingly  carried  out  with  a  pomp  and  circum- 
stance that  are  recorded  in  history  as  "  The  Great 
Railway  Celebrations  of  1857."  With  the  exception 
of  that  on  the  completion  of  the  first  transcontinental 
railroad,  the  celebrations  of  1857  constitute  the  great- 
est event  of  the  kind  in  the  history  of  the  Nation. 

The  initiative  was  taken  by  the  Ohio  and  Miss- 
issippi in  an  invitation  dated  April  8,  1857,  which  was 
sent  to  President  Buchanan,  the  members  of  his  cab- 
inet, foreign  ministers,  and  a  large  number  of  other 
prominent  men  East  and  West. 

An  interesting  side  light  on  the  great  number  and 
small  size  of  railroads  in  the  '50's  is  found  in  the  fact 
that  to  afford  guests  a  choice  of  routes  between  New 
York  and  St.  Louis  the  passes  accompanying  the  in- 
vitations were  indorsed  by  forty-two  railroads. 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  69 

The  forthcoming  celebration  at  once  became  the 
talk  of  the  country.  Every  one  who  had  any  real  or 
imaginary  influence  brought  it  to  bear  on  the  railroad 
officials  to  elicit  one  of  the  coveted  invitations. 

The  Ohio  and  Mississippi  Railroad  Company  in- 
vited seven  hundred  guests  from  the  East  and  nine 
hundred  from  the  West.  Among  them  were  George 
Bancroft,  W.  W.  Corcoran,  Stephen  A.  Douglas, 
Henry  Ward  Beecher,  and  Nathaniel  P.  Willis. 
Washington  Irving  was  cheated  out  of  the  trip  by 
some  perverse  fate  which  sent  his  invitation  astray 
and  delayed  it  until  the  festivities  were  over.  The 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  invited  four  hundred  and  fifty 
guests,  including  State  officers  and  the  judiciary  of 
Maryland  and  Virginia,  members  of  the  diplomatic 
corps,  and  newspaper  correspondents. 

Most  of  the  Eastern  guests  made  their  way  West 
at  their  own  convenience.  The  only  regular  party 
from  the  East  was  organized  by  the  Baltimore  and 
Ohio.  Leaving  Baltimore  at  6  o'clock  on  the  morn- 
ing of  Monday,  June  1,  1857,  by  special  train,  the 
run  of  two  hundred  and  seventy-nine  miles  to  Graf  ton 
was  made  in  fifteen  hours.  Here  the  party  spent  the 
night.  At  Parkersburg,  which  was  reached  in  the 
forenoon  of  the  next  day,  the  party,  now  increased  to 
six  hundred  souls,  embarked  on  the  steamboats  Albe- 
marle  and  John  Buck,  which  were  lashed  together, 
for  the  voyage  of  twelve  miles  against  the  turbulent 
yellow  current  of  the  Ohio. 

Booming  cannon,  cheering  crowds,  and  braying 
bands  greeted  the  guests  at  Marietta.  Governor 
Salmon  P.  Chase,  of  Ohio,  and  a  dozen  others  made 
speeches.  Then  everybody  was  ferried  across  the 


70  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Muskingum  River  to  reach  the  trains  of  the  Marietta 
and  Cincinnati  Railroad. 

The  second  night  was  spent  at  Chillicothe.  By  the 
time  the  old  Ohio  capital  was  reached  the  host  of  vis- 
itors had  been  swelled  to  a  thousand  persons.  As  the 
hotel  accommodations  were  totally  inadequate,  most 
of  the  visitors  had  to  be  billeted  at  the  homes  of  pri- 
vate citizens. 

Upon  reaching  Cincinnati  the  steadily  growing 
party  of  excursionists  found  that  they  formed  a  part 
of  a  host  of  twenty  thousand  people,  a  tremendous 
crowd  for  a  new  country  so  sparsely  populated,  which 
had  gathered  to  take  part  in  a  program  of  oratory, 
feasting,  and  noise  such  as  the  West  had  never  known 
before.  As  at  Chillicothe  the  guests  had  to  be  enter- 
tained at  private  homes. 

The  city  was  fairly  hidden  under  a  lavish  display 
of  flags,  banners,  and  mottoes,  of  which  the  following 
is  a  sample: 


A  LOCOMOTIVE  IS  THE  ONLY  GOOD  MOTIVE 

FOR 
RIDING  A  MAN  ON  A  RAIL. 


The  day,  which  was  observed  as  a  universal  holiday 
such  as  Cincinnati  had  never  known  before,  and  such 
as  she  probably  has  never  seen  since,  was  brought  to 
a  close  by  an  exhibition  of  the  new  steam  fire  engines, 
an  innovation  of  which  the  young  city  was  justifiably 
proud. 

Some  fifteen  hundred  guests,  as  many  as  could  be 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  71 

crowded  on  the  special  trains,  continued  the  triumphal 
progress  to  St.  Louis,  Thursday,  June  4.  Precau- 
tions as  elaborate  as  usually  attend  the  travels  of 
royalty  in  Europe  had  been  taken  to  insure  the  safety 
and  promote  the  comfort  of  the  guests.  Flagmen 
were  posted  on  every  mile  of  the  track,  and  extra  loco- 
motives with  steam  up  were  disposed  at  strategic 
points  to  take  the  place  of  those  drawing  the  special 
trains  if  they  broke  down. 

But  in  spite  of  all  precautions  the  locomotives  obsti- 
nately refused  to  break  down  where  they  could  be  re- 
placed conveniently,  but  took  particular  pains  to  get 
into  as  many  difficulties  as  possible  between  stations. 
Consequently  there  were  several  long  waits  in  the 
woods,  necessitated  by  a  pump  that  persisted  in  going 
wrong  at  the  most  inopportune  times,  a  hot  driving 
box,  or  something  of  that  sort.  These  unforeseen 
delays  troubled  the  excursionists  not  at  all,  for  there 
were  plenty  of  aspiring  orators  on  board  fairly  burst- 
ing with  burning  rhetoric.  The  average  American 
of  half  a  century  ago  doted  on  oratory.  Whenever 
the  trains  came  to  a  stop  the  passengers  ranged  them- 
selves around  the  nearest  stump,  upon  which  long- 
winded  speakers  would  hold  forth  until  the  whistle 
choked  them  off  in  the  middle  of  a  period  as  it  sum- 
moned them  to  the  train  again. 

The  pumps,  the  hot  boxes,  and  the  orators  com- 
bined delayed  the  special  trains  so  much  that  the  east- 
ern bank  of  the  Mississippi  was  not  reached  until 
after  midnight. 

The  visitors  alighted  in  the  glare  of  hundreds  of 
pine  torches  to  an  accompaniment  of  booming  cannon, 
and  hurried  to  four  brilliantly  illuminated  steamboats 


72  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

that  had  been  moored  to  the  Illinois  shore  for  their 
sleeping  quarters. 

Next  morning  there  was  a  procession  several  miles 
long  to  the  St.  Louis  Fair  Grounds,  where  the  entire 
day  was  devoted  to  speechmaking,  with  the  exception 
of  a  brief  respite  for  dinner.  An  evening  of  fire- 
works and  serenades  brought  the  first  of  the  great 
railway  celebrations  to  a  close. 

The  second  celebration  was  held  to  give  the  East  an 
opportunity  to  repay  the  hospitality  of  the  West. 
The  guests  left  St.  Louis  Wednesday,  July  15,  and 
after  the  usual  program  of  feasting  and  oratory  and 
fireworks,  arrived  at  Baltimore  Saturday,  July  18. 
After  being  photographed  at  the  "  Daguerrean 
Establishment "  of  Henry  Pollock,  the  procession  of 
one  hundred  and  ten  carriages  proceeded  to  Mary- 
land Institute,  where  they  found  the  chief  feature  of 
the  second  railroad  celebration  a  banquet  at  which  a 
thousand  men  sat  down.  As  a  gauge  of  pioneer  ap- 
petites and  a  memento  of  the  disastrous  results  of  the 
first  desultory  struggles  with  bill-of-fare  French  in 
America,  the  menu  of  this  famous  dinner  deserves  re- 
cording. Here  it  is  exactly  as  printed: 

SOUPS. 

Green  turtle  Soup  a  la  Julienne 

FISH. 

Boiled  Salmon,  Lobster  sauce  Boiled  Sheepshead,  White  sauce 

Striped  Bass,  baked,  Genoise  sauce 

Chesapeake  Bay  Mackerel,  a  la  Maitre  d'Hotel 

RELISHES. 

Worcestershire  sauce  French  Mustard  Assorted  pickles 

Apple  sauce  Currant  Jelly  Cucumbers 

Olives  Anchovies 


AMERICA'S  PIONEER  RAILROAD  73 

BOILED 
Ham  Lamb  Spring  Chicken 

ENTREES. 

Filets  de  Boeuf,  Madeira  wine  sauce          Petits  Pates  a  la  Reine 
Mountain  Oysters,  Sauce  Royale         Sweetbreads  larded,  Gardinere  sauce 
Filets  of  veal  Perageaux  Galantine  de  Poulets 

Vol  au  Vent  a  la  Financier  Young  Chickens  Maryland   style 

Lamb   Chops,    Soubaise   sauce  Timbale  de  maraconi,  Milanaise 

MARYLAND  COURSE 

Roast  Saddle  of  Mountain  Mutton,  Currant  Jelly 

Soft  Crabs  fried,  Butter  and  parsley  sauce 
Soft  Crabs    Broiled  Hard  Crabs  Deviled 

Summer  Ducks  with  olives  Green  Goose,  apple  sauce 

Roast   Ham,   Champagne  sauce 

VEGETABLES. 

Stewed  tomatoes  Green  corn  Boiled  beets 

Baked  Tomatoes  String  beans  Cymlings 

Green  Peas  Boiled  Potatoes 

COLD  DISHES 

Ham  on  a  Pedestal,  decorated  with  Jelly  Boeuf  Sale  en  Presse 

Boned  Turkey  on  a  Socle,  French  Style  Pate  of  Liver  Jelly 

Salade  de  poulets  Historee  Lobster  Salad,  Mayonnaise 

Buffalo  Tongues  garnished  with  jelly  Aspic  d'Huitres 

Crab  Salad,  Baltimore  fashion 

DESSERT 

Nougat  Basket  Madeira  Wine        Bisquit  Glacee  au  Cream  Caisse 

Punch  Cakes  Vanilla  Ice  Cream  Almond  Ice  Cream 

Strawberry  Ice  Cream  Orange  Ice  Cream  Raspberry  Ice  Cream 

Pineapple  Ice  Cream  Charlotte  Russe  Maraschino 

Plombiere  Charlotte  Russe    (Lemon)        Fancy  Cakes 

Bisquit  Glacee  au  Chorolade 

FRUITS 

Watermelons  Apples  Oranges  Pears 

Pineapples  Bananas  Apricots  Raspberries 

Responses  to  ten  set  toasts  and  to  five  volunteer 
toasts  and  two  extra  speeches  furnished  an  intellectual 


74  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

feast  that  rivaled  in  quantity  the  prodigal  dinner  that 
had  preceded  it.  A  trip  to  Washington,  where  Pres- 
ident Buchanan  made  a  speech,  and  an  excursion  to 
Norfolk,  during  which  less  distinguished  orators  held 
forth  on  the  boat  throughout  the  voyage,  ended  the 
second  celebration,  and  established  trade  relations  be- 
tween Baltimore  and  the  West  that  put  new  life  into 
the  through  rail  route  of  which  the  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  was  the  first  and  the  most  important  link. 


CHAPTER  III 
EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE 

THE  first  bride  who  ever  made  a  honeymoon  trip 
on  a  railroad  in  America  did  more  by  that  act 
to  expedite  the  building  of  the  world's  first  trunk  line 
than  the  ablest  statesmen,  engineers,  and  financiers  of 
the  Empire  State  had  been  able  to  accomplish  by  their 
united  efforts  in  half  a  dozen  years. 

Indeed,  it  is  within  bounds  to  go  much  further  than 
this  and  say  that  the  inspiration  drawn  from  this 
bride's  delight  over  her  novel  ride  pushed  the  hands 
of  progress  ahead  ten  years  on  the  dial  of  history. 

The  bride  who  achieved  so  much  was  Mrs.  Henry 
L.  Pierson,  of  Ramapo,  N.  Y.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pier- 
son  were  in  Charleston,  S.  C.,  early  in  January, 
1831,  on  their  wedding  tour.  When  Mrs.  Pierson 
heard  that  a  steam  locomotive  was  to  make  its  first 
trip  with  a  trainload  of  passengers  over  the  South 
Carolina  Railroad  from  Charleston  to  Hamburg,  six 
miles  away,  on  January  15,  she  was  eager  to  take  the 
ride;  and  her  husband,  like  a  dutiful  bridegroom, 
agreed. 

That  was  the  first  regular  train  that  ever  carried 
passengers  in  the  United  States.  It  was  then  less 
than  eighteen  months  from  the  time  when  the  first 
successful  locomotive  had  made  its  trial  trip. 

The  locomotive  which  drew  the  first  regular  passen- 
ger train  in  America  and  the  first  bridal  couple  to 

75 


76  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

take  a  railroad  journey  was  the  Best  Friend  of 
Charleston,  which  has  been  described  in  a  previous 
chapter. 

The  two  cars  were  crazy  contraptions  on  four 
wheels,  resembling  stagecoach  bodies  as  much  as  they 
did  anything  else.  The  train  contrived  to  get  over 
the  entire  system  of  six  miles  and  back  again  at  a 
fairly  satisfactory  speed. 

All  the  passengers  were  highly  pleased  with  their 
strange  experience.  The  bride  was  in  a  transport  of 
delight.  She  could  talk  of  nothing  else.  When  she 
returned  to  Ramapo  she  gave  her  brother-in-law, 
Eleazer  Lord,  and  her  father-in-law,  Jeremiah  Pier- 
son,  such  glowing  accounts  of  her  railroad  trip  that 
they  were  fired  with  enthusiasm.  The  bridegroom  had 
already  become  almost  as  ardent  an  advocate  of  rail- 
roads as  his  bride. 

Jeremiah  Pierson,  the  father  of  the  bridegroom, 
was  one  of  the  nation's  first  captains  of  industry.  He 
owned  several  thousand  acres  of  land  around  Ram- 
apo, on  which  he  conducted  tanneries,  a  cotton-mill, 
iron-works,  and  a  nail  factory.  His  son-in-law, 
Eleazer  Lord,  was  one  of  the  leading  merchants,  finan- 
ciers, and  public  men  of  New  York  City. 

For  half  a  dozen  years  the  two  had  been  deeply  in- 
terested in  Governor  De  Witt  Clinton's  ideas  for  the 
development  of  southern  New  York  by  means  of  a 
State  highway  or  canal  or  other  method  of  communi- 
cation, but  politicians  in  central  New  York,  where  the 
Erie  Canal  had  been  in  operation  from  1825,  by  meth- 
ods not  unknown  even  among  politicians  of  to-day, 
turned  all  the  efforts  of  the  Governor  and  his  public- 
spirited  supporters  into  a  farce. 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  77 

Later,  Mr.  Lord  and  his  father-in-law  had  been 
greatly  interested  in  the  possibilities  of  a  railroad  as 
the  best  form  for  Governor  Clinton's  proposed  high- 
way to  take.  But  their  original  idea  of  a  railroad  was 
an  affair  of  inclined  planes  and  horse-power. 

Of  course,  they  had  heard  all  about  the  experiments 
with  locomotives  and  the  building  of  the  South  Caro- 
lina Railroad,  the  first  in  the  world  projected  from 
the  outset  to  be  operated  by  steam  locomotives,  and 
they  had  been  deeply  interested  in  William  C.  Red- 
field's  famous  pamphlet,  so  widely  circulated  in  1829, 
proposing  a  steam  railroad  from  the  ocean  to  the 
Mississippi;  but  the  idea  of  a  steam  road  through 
southern  New  York  was  not  clearly  developed  in  their 
minds  until  the  bride's  glowing  accounts  of  her  expe- 
rience fired  their  imaginations. 

Young  Mrs.  Pierson  gave  it  as  her  opinion  that  if 
a  steam  railroad  were  built  it  would  be  possible  to 
go  from  New  York  to  Buffalo  in  twenty-four  hours. 
At  first,  the  men  folks  were  inclined  to  smile  at  this, 
but  they  were  thoroughly  impressed  with  the  value  of 
the  locomotive  as  described  by  this  ardent  advocate. 

Mrs.  Pierson's  girlish  enthusiasm  was  the  determin- 
ing factor  which  crystallized  the  ideas  of  those  men 
and  led  them  to  take  the  steps  which  finally  resulted 
in  the  building  of  what  is  now  known  as  the  Erie 
Railway,  which,  by  uniting  the  ocean  with  the  Great 
Lakes,  became  the  world's  first  trunk  line. 

No  railroad  has  had  a  more  romantic  history  than 
this  one,  which  had  its  inception  in  so  romantic  an  in- 
cident. It  required  twenty  years  of  toil  and  anxiety, 
sacrifice  and  discouragement,  to  get  the  line  through, 
but  it  was  accomplished  at  last,  and  the  bridegroom 


78  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

and  bride  who  had  made  the  memorable  first  wedding 
journey  by  rail  were  again  passengers  on  a  trip  which 
will  live  in  history  as  long  as  railroads  exist. 

This  time  the  bride  was  a  handsome  woman  of  mid- 
dle age,  but  she  was  just  as  proud  of  her  husband  as 
she  was  on  that  first  trip,  for  he  was  vice-president  of 
the  road,  the  longest  continuous  line  in  the  world,  and 
the  trains  did  move  at  a  speed  that  would  have  carried 
them  from  New  York  to  Buffalo  in  twenty-four 
hours,  just  as  she  had  prophesied  two  decades  before 
that  they  would. 

Mr.  Lord  at  once  began  corresponding  with  the 
most  influential  citizens  of  southern  New  York  on  the 
subject  of  building  a  steam  railroad  from  the  ocean  to 
the  Lakes.  The  idea  was  well  received  everywhere ;  so 
well,  in  fact,  that  a  public  meeting  in  furtherance  of 
Mr.  Lord's  railroad  scheme  was  held  at  Monticello, 
July  29,  1831 ;  another  at  Jamestown,  September  20, 
and  a  third  at  Angelica,  October  25.  Finally,  a  great 
central  convention  was  called  to  meet  at  Oswego,  De^ 
cember  20,  1831. 

People  were  inclined  to  believe  that  so  vast  an 
enterprise  as  the  building  of  five  hundred  miles  of 
railroad  was  too  much  for  one  company  to  under- 
take. It  was  pretty  generally  believed  that  two  com- 
panies would  be  required — one  to  build  from  New 
York  to  Oswego,  the  other  from  Oswego  to  Lake 
Erie. 

A  convention  at  Binghamton,  December  15,  had 
formally  approved  the  two-company  plan,  and  public 
opinion  had  pretty  definitely  decided  that  two  com- 
panies were  necessary. 

But  while  the  Oswego  convention  was  in  session  a 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  79 

citizen  rushed  breathlessly  in,  interrupting  a  delegate 
who  was  delivering  an  address,  and  in  the  most  ortho- 
dox style  known  to  melodrama  handed  the  president 
a  letter.  It  was  from  Eleazer  Lord,  briefly  but  em- 
phatically declaring  that  the  undertaking  could  be 
carried  to  success  only  by  a  single  corporation. 

His  reasoning  was  so  cogent  that  the  convention 
without  much  ado  decided  in  favor  of  one  corpora- 
tion, and  nothing  further  was  heard  of  the  two-com- 
pany proposition. 

Public  opinion  was  so  pronounced  in  favor  of  the 
railroad  that  the  politicians  from  the  canal  counties 
could  make  no  headway  against  it.  A  charter  drafted 
by  John  Duer,  of  New  York,  was  granted  the  New 
York  and  Erie  Railroad,  April  24,  1832. 

But  the  fine  Italian  hand  of  the  politicians  who 
could  not  prevent  the  granting  of  the  charter  was 
clearly  to  be  seen  in  the  document  itself.  That  in- 
strument provided  that  the  entire  capital  stock  of  ten 
million  dollars  must  be  subscribed  and  five  per  cent 
of  the  amount  paid  in  before  the  company  could  in- 
corporate. 

The  canal  counties  had  served  public  notice  that  the 
projectors  of  this  great  public  work  would  have  to 
combat  all  the  pettifogging  intrigues  of  which  small 
politicians  were  capable  before  they  could  even  begin 
their  titanic  contest  with  nature. 

The  little  band  of  enthusiasts  led  by  Eleazer  Lord 
were  undertaking  the  most  stupendous  task  that  had 
been  set  before  the  nation  up  to  that  time.  The  coun- 
try was  poor  in  resources;  the  region  through  which 
the  road  was  to  run  was  a  wilderness  except  for  a  few 
scattering  villages. 


80  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Missouri  was  the  only  State  west  of  the  Mississippi. 
Chicago  was  a  village  clustered  around  Fort  Dear- 
born. Railroad  building  was  an  unknown  science 
three-quarters  of  a  century  ago.  The  building  of  five 
hundred  miles  of  road  then  was  a  far  more  stupendous 
task  than  the  building  of  ten  thousand  miles  would  be 
to-day. 

Seeing  the  hopelessness  of  complying  with  the  terms 
of  the  charter,  the  incorporators  contrived  to  bring 
enough  pressure  to  bear  on  the  legislature  to  have 
the  amount  of  subscription  required  before  organiza- 
tion reduced  to  one  million  dollars. 

Finally,  on  August  9,  1833,  the  New  York  and 
Erie  Railroad  Company  was  organized,  with  Mr. 
Lord  as  president.  The  next  month  the  board  of 
directors  issued  an  address  asking  for  donations  of 
right  of  way  and  additional  donations  of  land. 

As  no  survey  had  been  made,  and  no  one  had  any 
idea  where  the  road  would  be  located,  this  address 
failed  to  bring  out  either  donations  or  subscriptions 
of  stock,  but  there  was  a  great  deal  of  harsh  talk 
about  land-speculation  schemes. 

In  desperation,  a  convention  was  held,  November 
20,  1833,  in  New  York  City,  to  ask  for  State  aid. 
The  aid  was  not  forthcoming.  Next  year  the  com- 
pany took  the  little  money  received  for  stock  from 
the  incorporators  and  started  the  surveys.  The  east- 
ern end  of  the  line  began  in  a  marsh  on  the  banks  of 
the  Hudson,  twenty-four  miles  north  of  New  York 
City. 

Considering  that  the  fundamental  purpose  of  the 
road  was  to  secure  the  trade  of  the  interior  to  New 
York,  this  did  not  make  any  new  friends  for  the  road. 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  81 

The  western  end  of  the  road  was  to  be  Dunkirk,  a 
village  of  four  hundred  inhabitants,  on  the  shores  of 
Lake  Erie. 

The  talk  about  land  speculation  and  the  failure  to 
make  satisfactory  progress  created  such  strong  oppo- 
sition to  his  policy  that  Mr.  Lord  resigned  as  presi- 
dent at  the  January  meeting  in  1835,  and  J.  G.  King 
'was  elected  to  succeed  him.  King,  by  superhuman 
exertions,  was  able  to  make  an  actual  beginning. 

He  went  to  Deposit,  some  one  hundred  and  sev- 
enty-seven miles  from  New  York,  where  at  sunrise 
on  a  clear,  frosty  morning,  November  7,  1835,  on  the 
eastern  bank  of  the  Delaware  River,  he  made  a  little 
speech  to  a  party  of  thirty  men,  in  which  he  expressed 
the  conviction  that  the  railroad  for  which  he  was 
about  to  break  ground  might  in  a  few  years  earn  as 
much  as  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year  from 
freight. 

This  roseate  prophecy  being  received  with  incre- 
dulity, Mr.  King  hastened  to  modify  it  by  saying  the 
earnings  might  amount  to  so  vast  a  sum  "  at  least 
eventually."  Then  he  shoveled  a  wheelbarrow-load 
of  dirt,  which  another  member  of  the  party  wheeled 
away  and  dumped,  and  the  great  work  was  begun. 

But  it  was  only  begun.  No  progress  was  made 
that  year,  nor  did  it  look  as  if  any  further  progress 
ever  would  be  made.  The  great  fire  in  New  York, 
December  16,  1835,  ruined  many  of  the  stockholders, 
and  the  panic  of  1836-1837  bankrupted  many  more. 

Once  more  the  company  resolved  to  appeal  to  the 
legislature  for  aid  as  a  last  desperate  expedient.  The 
sum  required  was  fixed  at  three  million  dollars. 

Although  the  request  was  supported  by  huge  peti- 


82  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

tions  from  New  York,  Brooklyn,  and  every  county 
in  the  southern  tier,  the  opposition  was  bitter.  How- 
ever, public  opinion  was  too  strong  to  be  ignored,  so 
the  opposition  went  through  the  form  of  yielding  to 
popular  clamor  by  presenting  a  bill  to  advance  two 
million  dollars  when  the  company  had  expended  four 
million  six  hundred  and  seventy-four  thousand  five 
hundred  and  eighteen  dollars. 

This  was  a  safe  move,  because  the  company  had  not 
a  dollar  in  the  treasury,  and  no  means  of  getting  one. 
Subsequently  the  conditions  were  modified  and  the 
credit  of  the  State  to  the  amount  of  three  million  dol- 
lars was  loaned.  Ultimately  the  amount  was  given 
outright. 

In  December,  1836,  the  board  issued  a  call  for  a 
payment  of  two  dollars  and  a  half  a  share.  Less  than 
half  the  stockholders  responded.  Then  a  public  meet- 
ing was  held,  at  which  a  committee  of  thirty-nine  was 
appointed  to  receive  subscriptions.  The  committee 
opened  its  books  and  sat  down  to  wait  for  the  public 
to  step  up  and  subscribe.  The  public  didn't  step. 

By  1838  President  King  had  had  enough  of  the 
effort  to  materialize  a  railroad  out  of  the  circumam- 
bient atmosphere,  and  the  board  of  directors  again 
turned  to  Eleazer  Lord,  who  had  a  new  plan  to  offer. 
It  was  to  let  contracts  for  the  first  ten  miles  from 
Piermont,  the  terminus  of  the  road  on  the  Hudson, 
twenty-four  miles  above  New  York,  and  solicit  sub- 
scriptions in  the  city  to  pay  for  that  amount  of  work, 
and  to  solicit  subscriptions  from  Rockland  and 
Orange  counties  to  pay  for  the  next  thirty-six  miles, 
to  Goshen.  Middletown  was  to  be  asked  to  pay  for 
nine  miles  between  that  point  and  Goshen. 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  83 

Before  this  plan  could  be  put  in  operation,  the  com- 
pany had  a  very  narrow  escape  from  an  untimely  end. 
People  were  getting  so  impatient  to  see  some  progress 
made  that  the  legislature  of  1838-1839  was  swamped 
with  petitions  for  the  immediate  construction  of  the 
road  by  the  State. 

February  14,  1839,  a  bill  authorizing  the  surrender 
by  the  New  York  and  Erie  Railroad  Company  of 
all  its  rights,  titles,  franchises,  and  property  to  the 
State  was  defeated  in  the  Senate  by  the  narrow  mar- 
gin of  one  vote. 

The  Assembly  succeeded  in  passing  a  similar  bill, 
but  it  was  defeated  in  the  Senate,  seventeen  to  twenty- 
four.  The  Governor  stood  ready  to  sign  the  bill  if  it 
had  been  adopted  by  the  legislature. 

In  the  spring  of  1839  grading  was  begun  under 
Lord's  newest  plan.  October  4,  1839,  Lord  was 
again  made  president,  and  H.  L.  Pierson,  who  with 
his  bride  had  taken  that  historic  ride  on  the  first  pas- 
senger train,  was  made  a  director.  Mr.  Lord  con- 
tinued to  keep  things  moving  in  his  second  admin- 
istration so  effectively  that  on  Wednesday,  June  30, 
1841,  the  first  trainload  of  passengers  that  ever  trav- 
eled over  the  Erie  Railroad  was  taken  to  Ramapo, 
where  the  party  was  entertained  by  the  venerable  Jer- 
emiah Pierson,  the  father-in-law  of  the  bride  who 
made  the  memorable  trip  ten  years  before,  who  was 
one  of  the  directors  of  the  road.  Three  months  later 
the  line  was  opened  for  traffic  to  Goshen,  forty-six 
miles  from  Piermont. 

Slowly,  very  slowly,  the  rails  crept  westward.  Not 
until  December  27,  1848,  more  than  seven  years  after 
reaching  Goshen,  did  the  first  train  enter  Bingham- 


84  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

ton,  one  hundred  and  fifty-six  miles  beyond.  In  all 
those  seven  years  the  Erie  Company  was  experienc- 
ing a  continuous  succession  of  perplexities,  annoy- 
ances, difficulties,  and  dangers  that  in  number  and 
variety  have  probably  never  been  equaled  in  the  his- 
tory of  any  other  commercial  enterprise  in  this 
country. 

The  financing  of  the  work  was  one  prolonged  vex- 
ation. Times  innumerable  it  seemed  as  if  the  whole 
enterprise  must  fail  for  want  of  funds,  but  at  the  last 
minute  of  the  eleventh  hour  some  way  out  would  be 
found. 

Then,  too,  the  company  had  to  learn  the  science  of 
railroading  as  it  went  along.  There  was  no  telegraph 
in  those  days  to  facilitate  the  movement  of  trains. 
The  only  reliance  was  a  time  card  and  a  set  of  rules. 

Locomotives  and  rolling  stock  were  small  and  crude. 
Officials  and  employees  had  everything  to  learn,  since 
railroads  were  new,  and  every  point  learned  was  paid 
for  in  experience  at  a  good  round  figure.  The  living 
instrumentalities  through  which  the  evolution  of  the 
railroad  was  achieved  were  very  much  in  earnest,  as 
they  had  need  to  be.  They  were  too  busy  with  the 
problems  of  each  day  as  they  arose  to  glut  their  vanity 
with  profitless  reflections  upon  the  magnificence  of  the 
task  upon  which  they  were  engaged,  or  to  enjoy  the 
humor  of  the  expedients  which  led  to  their  solution. 
Posterity  gets  all  the  laughs  as  well  as  the  benefits. 

An  interesting  example  of  the  quaint  devices  by 
which  important  ends  were  attained  is  afforded  by  the 
origin  of  the  bell  cord,  the  forerunner  of  the  air  whis- 
tle, now  in  universal  use  on  American  roads  for  sig- 
naling the  engineer  from  the  train.  A  means  of  com- 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  85 

munication  between  the  engine  and  the  train  has 
always  been  considered  indispensable  in  America.  In 
Europe  the  lack  of  such  means  of  communication  has 
been  the  fruitful  source  of  accidents  and  crimes. 

The  bell  cord  was  the  invention  of  Conductor 
Henry  Ayers,  of  the  Erie  Railroad.  In  the  spring 
of  1842,  soon  after  the  line  had  been  opened  to 
Goshen,  forty-six  miles  from  the  Hudson  River,  there 
were  no  cabs  on  the  engines,  no  caboose  for  the  train- 
men, no  way  of  getting  over  the  cars,  and  no  means 
of  communicating  with  the  engineer.  There  were  no 
such  things  as  telegraphic  train  orders,  no  block  sig- 
nals, no  printed  time  cards,  no  anything  but  a  few 
vague  rules  for  the  movement  of  trains.  The  engi- 
neer was  an  autocrat,  who  ran  the  train  to  suit  him- 
self. The  conductor  was  merely  a  humble  collector 
of  fares. 

Conductor  Ayers,  who  afterwards  for  many  years 
was  one  of  the  most  popular  men  of  his  calling  in 
the  country,  was  assigned  to  a  train  whose  destinies 
were  ruled  by  Engineer  Jacob  Hamel,  a  German  of 
a  very  grave  turn  of  mind,  fully  alive  to  the  dignity 
of  his  position,  who  looked  upon  the  genial  conductor 
with  dark  suspicion.  When  Ayers  suggested  that 
there  should  be  some  means  of  signaling  the  engineer 
so  he  could  notify  him  when  to  stop  to  let  off  passen- 
gers, suspicion  became  a  certainty  that  the  conductor 
was  seeking  to  usurp  the  prerogatives  of  the  engi- 
neer. Hamel  decided  to  teach  the  impertinent  col- 
lector of  small  change  his  place. 

One  day  Ayers  procured  a  stout  cord,  which  he  ran 
from  the  rear  car  of  the  train  to  the  framework  of  the 
cabless  engine.  He  tied  a  stick  of  wood  on  the  end 


86  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

of  the  cord,  and  told  Hamel  that  when  he  saw  the 
stick  jerk  up  and  down  he  was  to  stop.  Hamel  lis- 
tened in  contemptuous  silence,  and  as  soon  as  the  con- 
ductor's back  was  turned  threw  away  the  stick  and  tied 
the  cord  to  the  frame  of  the  engine.  Next  day  the 
performance  was  repeated. 

On  the  third  day  Ayers  rigged  up  his  cord  and  his 
stick  of  wood  before  starting  from  Piermont,  the  east- 
ern terminus,  and  told  Jacob  that  if  he  threw  that 
stick  away  he  would  thrash  him  until  he  would  be 
glad  to  leave  it  alone. 

When  they  reached  Goshen  the  stick  was  gone,  as 
usual,  and  the  end  of  the  cord  was  trailing  in  the  dirt. 
Ayers  walked  up  to  the  engine,  and  without  saying  a 
word  yanked  Hamel  off  the  engine  and  sailed  in  to 
thrash  him.  This  proved  to  be  no  easy  task,  for 
Hamel  had  all  the  dogged  tenacity  of  his  race.  But 
one  represented  Prerogative,  while  the  other  cham- 
pioned Progress,  and  Progress  won  at  last,  as  it 
usually  does. 

That  hard-won  victory  settled  for  all  time  the 
question  of  who  should  run  a  train.  Also  it  showed 
the  way  to  a  most  useful  improvement.  Once  the 
idea  was  hit  upon  it  did  not  take  long  to  replace  the 
stick  of  wood  with  a  gong.  In  a  very  short  time 
the  bell  cord  was  in  universal  use  on  passenger  trains. 

To  Conductor  Ayers  is  also  due  the  credit  of  intro- 
ducing another  new  idea,  which,  if  not  so  useful  in  the 
operation  of  trains,  was  at  least  gratefully  appreci- 
ated by  a  numerous  and  influential  class  of  patrons: 
the  custom  of  allowing  ministers  of  the  Gospel  half 
rates. 

Early  in  the  spring  of  1843  the  Rev.  Dr.  Robert 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  87 

McCartee,  pastor  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  at 
Goshen,  was  a  passenger  on  Conductor  Ayers's  train. 
On  account  of  a  very  heavy  rain  the  track  was  in  such 
bad  condition  that  the  train  was  delayed  for  hours. 
The  passengers,  following  a  custom  that  has  been  pre- 
served in  all  the  vigor  of  its  early  days,  heaped  male- 
dictions upon  the  management.  Some  of  the  more 
spirited  ones  drew  up  a  set  of  resolutions  denouncing 
the  company  for  the  high-handed  invasion  of  their 
rights,  as  manifested  in  the  delay,  in  scathing  terms. 
These  resolutions  were  passed  along  to  be  signed  by 
all  the  passengers.  When  Dr.  McCartee  was  asked 
for  his  signature,  he  said  he  would  be  happy  to  give  it 
if  the  phraseology  was  changed  slightly.  Upon  being 
requested  to  name  the  changes  he  wished,  he  wrote 
the  following: 

"  Whereas,  the  recent  rain  has  fallen  at  a  time  ill-suited  to 
our  pleasure  and  convenience  and  without  consultation  with 
us ;  and 

"  Whereas,  Jack  Frost  who  has  been  imprisoned  in  the 
ground  some  months,  having  become  tired  of  his  bondage,  is 
trying  to  break  loose ;  therefore  be  it 

"  RESOLVED,  that  we  would  be  glad  to  have  it  otherwise." 

When  the  good  Dr.  McCartee  arose  and  in  his  best 
parliamentary  voice  read  his  proposed  amendment, 
there  was  a  hearty  laugh,  and  nothing  more  was  heard 
about  censuring  the  management. 

Conductor  Ayers  was  so  delighted  with  this  turn 
of  affairs  that  thereafter  he  would  never  accept  a  fare 
from  Dr.  McCartee.  Not  being  selfish,  the  Doctor 
suggested  a  few  weeks  later  that  the  courtesy  be  ex- 
tended to  all  ministers.  The  company  thought  the 


88  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

idea  a  good  one,  and  for  a  few  months  no  minister 
paid  for  riding  over  the  Erie.  Then  an  order  was 
issued  that  ministers  were  to  be  charged  half  fare. 
That  order  established  a  precedent  which  was  uni- 
versally followed  until  the  new  rate  law  put  an  end 
to  the  practice. 

The  modest  but  invaluable  ticket  punch  was  also 
evolved  on  the  Erie.  When  the  first  section  of  the 
road  was  opened  in  1841  there  were  no  ticket  agents. 
Each  conductor  was  given  a  tin  box  when  he  started 
out  for  the  day,  which  contained  a  supply  of  tickets 
and  ten  dollars  in  change.  The  passenger  on  paying 
the  conductor  his  fare  received  a  ticket,  which  he  sur- 
rendered on  the  boat  during  his  voyage  of  twenty- 
four  miles  down  the  Hudson  from  Piermont  to  New 
York.  These  tickets  were  heavy  cards  bearing  the 
signature  of  the  general  ticket  agent.  These  were 
taken  up  and  used  over  and  over  again  until  they 
became  soiled. 

Travelers  soon  found  a  way  to  beat  the  company. 
They  would  buy  a  through  ticket  which  they  would 
show  according  to  custom.  At  the  last  station  before 
reaching  their  destination  they  would  purchase  a 
ticket  from  that  station  to  destination.  This  latter 
ticket  would  be  surrendered  and  the  through  ticket 
kept  to  be  used  over  again.  The  process  would  be 
repeated  on  the  return  trip.  The  passenger  would 
then  be  in  possession  of  through  transportation,  which 
enabled  him  to  ride  as  often  as  he  liked  by  merely 
paying  for  a  few  miles  at  each  end  of  his  trip. 

It  was  some  time  before  this  fraud  was  discovered. 
Then  a  system  of  lead  pencil  marks  was  instituted, 
but  pencil  marks  were  easy  to  erase.  The  only  sort 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  89 

of  mark  that  could  not  be  erased  was  one  that  muti- 
lated the  ticket.  This  led  to  the  development  of  the 
punch. 

Another  interesting  innovation  which  originated 
on  the  Erie  was  intended  for  the  laudable  purpose  of 
protecting  passengers  from  the  dust  which  has  always 
been  one  of  ihe  afflictions  associated  with  railroad 
travel.  A  funnel  with  its  mouth  pointed  in  the  di- 
rection the  train  was  moving  was  placed  on  the  roof 
of  the  car,  through  which,  when  the  train  was  in  mo- 
tion, a  current  of  air  was  forced  into  a  chamber  where 
sprays  of  water  operated  by  a  pump  driven  from  an 
axle  washed  the  dust  out  and  delivered  the  air  sweet- 
ened and  purified  to  the  occupants  of  the  car.  A 
small  stove  was  provided  to  heat  the  wash  water  in 
winter.  Several  cars  were  so  equipped,  and  they 
seem  to  have  satisfied  the  demands  of  the  day,  for 
David  Stevenson,  F.R.S.E.,  of  England,  who  made 
a  tour  of  inspection  of  American  railroads  in  1857, 
recommended  their  adoption  by  English  railroads. 
But  the  combined  ventilator  and  washery  did  not 
stand  the  test  of  time;  and  in  later  years  passengers 
on  the  Erie,  in  common  with  the  patrons  of  other 
roads,  were  obliged  to  be  content  with  unlaundered 
air. 

While  it  was  learning  the  rudiments  of  railroad- 
ing the  company  acquired  some  interesting  side-lights 
on  human  nature,  also  at  war  prices.  People  of  a 
certain  type  were  eager  to  have  the  railroad  built,  but 
they  never  permitted  this  eagerness  to  blind  them  to 
the  immediate  interests  of  their  own  pockets. 

One  of  the  natives  near  Goshen  had  bought  a  tract 
of  land  along  the  right-of-way,  expecting  to  make 


90  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

a  fortune  out  of  it  when  the  road  was  in  operation. 
The  fortune  manifested  no  indications  of  appearing 
until  the  native  observed  that  the  railroad  had  estab- 
lished a  water-tank  opposite  his  land,  which  was  sup- 
plied by  a  wooden  pump  which  required  a  man  to 
operate. 

Thereupon  the  native  scooped  out  a  big  hole  on 
top  of  a  hill  near  by,  lined  it  with  clay  to  make  it 
waterproof,  and  dug  some  shallow  trenches  from 
higher  ground  to  the  basin,  which  was  soon  filled  by 
the  rains. 

Then  the  native  went  to  New  York  and  told  the 
officers  of  the  road  that  he  had  a  valuable  spring 
which  would  afford  a  much  more  satisfactory  supply 
of  water  than  the  pump.  He  would  sell  this  spring 
for  two  thousand  five  hundred  dollars  if  the  bargain 
was  closed  at  once. 

Commissioners  were  sent  to  examine  the  spring  and 
close  the  deal.  The  two  thousand  five  hundred  dol- 
lars were  paid  over,  and  the  company  spent  two  thou- 
sand five  hundred  dollars  more  laying  pipes  from  the 
"  spring  "  to  the  track.  Of  course,  the  water  all  ran 
out  in  a  short  time,  and  no  more  took  its  place.  Then 
the  railroad  company  found  that  the  land  was  mort- 
gaged, and  that  if  they  did  not  get  their  pipe  up  in  a 
hurry  it  would  be  lost,  too. 

A  neighbor  of  this  same  native  had  a  mill  run  by 
water-power,  which  had  been  standing  idle  for  a  cou- 
ple of  years.  The  railroad  skirted  the  edge  of  the 
mill-pond.  One  day  a  train  got  tired  of  pounding 
along  over  the  rough  track  and  plunged  off  into  the 
mill-pond. 

The  company  asked  the  owner  to  let  the  water  off, 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  91 

so  that  it  could  recover  its  rolling  stock.  But  the 
mill  man  suddenly  became  very  busy,  started  up  his 
mill,  and  declared  he  couldn't  think  of  shutting  down 
unless  he  was  paid  six  hundred  dollars  to  compensate 
him  for  lost  time.  Not  seeing  any  other  solution  of 
the  difficulty,  the  railroad  company  paid  the  six  hun- 
dred dollars. 

Going  down  the  Shawangunk  Mountains  into  the 
Neversink  Valley  there  was  a  rocky  ledge  through 
which  a  way  had  to  be  blasted.  The  German  owner 
of  the  rocks,  when  approached  by  the  right-of-way 
agents,  gave  some  sort  of  non-committal  reply  which 
was  interpreted  as  consent.  But  when  the  workmen 
began  operations  on  the  rocks  the  owner  stopped 
them  and  would  not  let  them  do  a  stroke  until  he  had 
been  paid  a  hundred  dollars  an  acre  for  two  acres  of 
rock  that  was  not  worth  ten  cents  a  square  mile.  All 
along  the  line  owners  suddenly  appeared  for  land  that 
had  been  regarded  as  utterly  worthless  who  had  to  be 
paid  extravagant  sums  for  right-of-way  through 
their  property.  Fancy  prices  were  also  extorted  for 
ties,  fuel,  and  bridge  timbers  for  the  railroad. 

Retribution  overtook  the  greedy  ones  at  last.  The 
Irish  laborers  employed  on  the  grade  overran  the 
country,  digging  potatoes,  robbing  hen-roosts  and 
orchards,  and  helping  themselves  to  whatever  else 
took  their  fancy. 

The  company  had  its  full  share  of  trouble  with 
these  same  Irishmen.  Some  were  from  Cork,  some 
were  from  Tipper ary,  some  from  the  north  of  Ire- 
land, called  the  "  Far-downers,"  while  all  were  pug- 
nacious to  the  last  degree.  There  were  frequent  fac- 
tional riots,  in  one  of  which  three  men  were  killed. 


92  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

According  to  popular  report,  a  good  many  others 
were  killed  and  their  bodies  buried  in  the  fills  as  the 
easiest  way  to  dispose  of  them  and  the  chance  of  trou- 
blesome official  investigations.  On  several  occasions 
the  militia  had  to  be  called  out  to  suppress  disturb- 
ances. Prevention  by  a  general  disarmament  and 
the  confiscation  of  whisky  was  ultimately  found  to  be 
the  most  effective  way  of  dealing  with  the  turbulent 
ones. 

Still,  there  were  a  few  incidents  of  a  more  agree- 
able nature.  In  1841,  G.  W.  Scranton,  of  Oxford, 
N.  J.,  attracted  by  the  rich  deposits  of  iron  and  coal 
in  the  Luzerne  Valley,  Pennsylvania,  bought  a  tract 
of  land  there  and  established  iron-works,  where  he 
was  joined  later  by  S.  T.  Scranton.  They  had  a  hard 
struggle  to  keep  going  for  five  years. 

Then  W.  E.  Dodge,  a  director  in  the  Erie,  who 
knew  the  Scrantons,  conceived  the  idea  of  having  the 
Scrantons  make  rails  for  the  road.  The  company 
was  having  great  difficulty  in  getting  rails  from  Eng- 
land, and  the  cost  was  excessive. 

A  contract  was  made  with  the  Scrantons  to  fur- 
nish twelve  thousand  tons  of  rails  at  forty-six  dollars 
a  ton,  which  was  about  half  the  cost  of  the  English 
rails.  Dodge  and  others  advanced  the  money  to  pur- 
chase the  necessary  machinery,  and  the  rails  were 
ready  for  delivery  in  the  spring  of  1847.  This  Erie 
contract  laid  the  foundations  of  the  city  of  Scranton. 

To  get  the  rails  where  they  were  needed  it  was 
necessary  to  haul  them  by  team  through  the  wilder- 
ness to  the  Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal,  at  Archbold, 
thence  by  canal-boat  to  Carbondale,  thence  by  a 
gravity  railroad  to  Honesdale,  thence  by  canal-boat, 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  93 

again,  to  Cuddebackville,  and  finally  by  team  once 
more  over  the  Shawangunk  Mountains  on  the  west- 
ern extension,  a  distance  of  sixty  miles. 

By  the  time  the  road  had  reached  Binghamton,  two 
hundred  and  sixteen  miles  from  New  York,  the  Erie 
company  seemed  to  be  at  its  last  gasp.  Every  dollar 
of  the  three  million  that  by  superhuman  exertion  had 
been  raised  for  construction  was  gone,  and  there 
seemed  no  way  to  raise  more. 

At  the  last  moment  Alexander  S.  Diven,  of  Elmira, 
came  to  the  rescue  with  a  device  which  has  since  be- 
come the  standard  method  of  railroad-building.  This 
was  a  construction  syndicate,  the  first  ever  organized. 
An  agreement  was  made  by  which  the  Diven  syndi- 
cate was  to  do  the  grading,  furnish  all  material  except 
the  rails,  and  lay  the  track  from  Binghamton  to  Corn- 
ing, a  distance  of  seventy-six  miles,  taking  in  payment 
four  million  dollars  in  second-mortgage  bonds. 

This  saved  the  situation  and  aroused  new  interest  in 
the  road.  It  made  fortunes  for  the  members  of  the 
syndicate,  but  it  increased  the  heavy  burden  of  debt 
on  the  company  and  helped  to  make  trouble  for  the 
future. 

In  1849  the  company  tried  the  interesting  experi- 
ment of  building  iron  bridges.  Three  of  them,  the 
first  structures  of  the  kind  ever  built  for  a  railroad, 
were  erected  during  that  year.  An  eastbound  stock 
train  was  crossing  one  of  the  iron  bridges  near  Mast 
Hope  July  31,  1849,  when  the  engineer  heard  a  loud 
cracking.  Instantly  divining  the  reason,  he  jerked 
the  throttle  wide  open  and  succeeded  in  getting  the 
engine  across  in  safety.  So  narrow  was  his  escape 
that  even  the  tender  of  the  locomotive  followed  the 


94  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

train  into  the  creek  along  with  the  wrecked  bridge. 
A  brakeman  and  two  stockmen  lost  their  lives. 

This  accident  caused  the  company  to  lose  faith  in 
iron  bridges.  Thereafter  all  bridges  were  built  of 
wood,  including  the  famous  structure  over  the  chasm 
of  the  Genesee  River  at  Portage.  This  chasm  was 
two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  deep  and  nine  hundred  feet 
wide.  A  congress  of  engineers  being  assembled  to 
devise  means  of  crossing  it,  a  wooden  bridge  in  spans 
of  fifty  feet  was  decided  upon. 

It  required  two  years'  time  and  an  outlay  of  one 
hundred  and  seventy-five  thousand  dollars  to  build. 
When  it  was  opened  August  9,  1852,  sixteen  million 
feet  of  timber,  the  product  of  three  hundred  acres  of 
pine  forest,  had  gone  into  the  structure.  The  science 
of  iron  bridge  building  was  making  progress;  and 
when  the  great  wooden  structure  burned  in  1875  it 
was  replaced  in  forty-seven  days  with  a  modern  steel 
bridge. 

The  road  was  completed  to  Corning  on  December 
31,  1849.  By  this  time  business  throughout  the 
country  was  improving,  and  the  prospects  of  the  Erie 
looked  brighter. 

There  now  remained  a  gap  of  one  hundred  and 
sixty-nine  miles  from  Corning  to  Dunkirk,  on  Lake 
Erie,  the  western  terminus,  to  be  filled  in.  But  the 
company  having  learned  how  to  issue  bonds,  the  rest 
seemed  easy.  An  issue  of  three  million  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars  of  income  bonds,  bearing  seven  per 
cent  interest,  floated  at  a  heavy  discount,  followed 
later  on  by  a  second  issue  of  the  same  amount,  paid 
for  the  completion  of  the  work,  in  the  spring  of  1851. 

The  driving  of  the  last  spike,  which  completed  the 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  95 

road  that  linked  the  ocean  with  the  Lakes,  marked  an 
epoch  in  the  history  of  railroads.  The  first  great 
trunk  line  was  now  ready  for  traffic.  The  Pennsyl- 
vania was  then  only  a  local  line  from  Philadelphia  to 
Hollidaysburg,  in  the  foothills  of  the  Alleghanies. 

New  York  was  connected  with  Buffalo  by  an  ag- 
gregation of  ramshackle  roads  of  assorted  gauges. 
The  only  other  road  of  importance  in  the  world  was 
the  line  from  St.  Petersburg  to  Moscow,  which  was 
opened  also  in  1851. 

So  notable  an  event  called  for  something  unusual 
in  the  way  of  a  celebration.  Whatever  may  have 
been  its  shortcomings  in  financial  acumen  or  con- 
structive genius,  and  it  had  many  such  to  answer  for, 
the  Erie  management  was  a  past  master  in  the  art  of 
celebrating.  Beginning  with  the  opening  of  the  first 
section  of  the  line  to  Ramapo,  away  back  in  1841, 
every  achievement  in  construction  had  been  celebrated 
with  great  eclat.  The  completion  of  the  line  to 
Goshen,  to  Port  Jervis,  to  Binghamton,  to  Elmira, 
the  completion  of  the  Starucca  viaduct  and  of  the 
wooden  bridge  over  the  chasm  of  the  Genesee  at 
Portage,  had  all  been  celebrated  with  prodigal  pomp. 

When  the  time  came  that  the  world's  first  long-dis- 
tance railroad  excursion  could  be  made  the  celebration 
arranged  eclipsed  anything  of  the  kind  that  had  been 
done.  The  guests  included  President  Fillmore, 
Secretary  of  State  Daniel  Webster,  Attorney-Gen- 
eral John  J.  Crittenden,  Secretary  of  the  Navy  W.  C. 
Graham,  Postmaster- General  W.  K.  Hall,  and  some 
three  hundred  other  distinguished  guests,  including 
six  candidates  for  the  Presidency,  twelve  candidates 
for  the  Vice-Presidency,  United  States  Senators, 


96  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

governors,  mayors,  capitalists,  merchants,  and  Presi- 
dent Benjamin  Loder  and  the  other  officers  and 
directors  of  the  company. 

When  President  Fillmore,  the  members  of  his 
cabinet,  and  other  distinguished  guests  came  up  from 
Amboy  on  the  steamer  Erie  in  mid-afternoon  on  May 
13,  1851,  all  the  shipping  in  the  Harbor  was  dressed 
in  bunting.  Batteries  at  Forts  Hamilton  and 
Diamond  and  on  Governor's  Island  and  Bedloe's  Isl- 
and boomed  forth  National  salutes.  Cheers  from 
fifty  thousand  throats  and  a  salute  from  pieces  used 
in  1776,  fired  by  veterans  of  the  Revolution,  greeted 
the  President  and  his  suite  as  they  disembarked  at  the 
Battery.  Nine  thousand  militia  were  on  hand  to  es- 
cort the  President  to  the  Irving  Hotel  at  Broadway 
and  Twelfth  Street.  Webster,  who  was  already 
showing  marked  indications  of  his  approaching  end, 
went  to  the  Astor  House,  where  he  always  stopped. 
An  elaborate  dinner  was  the  event  of  the  evening. 

According  to  the  program,  the  boat  carrying  the 
guests  was  to  leave  for  Piermont  at  6  A.M.  on  Wed- 
nesday, May  14,  1851.  There  was  a  pouring  rain 
that  morning,  but,  despite  the  unearthly  hour  and  the 
rain,  the  streets  were  packed  with  people  to  cheer  the 
departing  guests.  A  blundering  porter  was  slow 
with  Webster's  baggage,  and  the  boat  did  not  get 
away  until  6.10. 

The  famous  Dodsworth's  Band,  which  had  been  en- 
gaged to  accompany  the  party  to  Dunkirk,  rendered 
an  elaborate  program  on  the  way  up  the  river. 
Another  very  important  member  of  the  party  was 
George  Downing,  the  most  famous  caterer  of  his  day, 
who  had  with  him  a  picked  corps  of  waiters,  whose 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  97 

duty  it  was  to  see  that  no  one  lacked  refreshment — 
liquid  or  solid. 

On  arriving  at  Piermont,  at  7.45  A.M.,  the  party 
was  received  with  the  ringing  of  bells,  the  booming 
of  cannon,  and  the  cheers  of  a  multitude.  The  two 
trains  which  were  to  carry  the  invited  guests  were 
decorated  with  bunting,  and  there  were  flags  and  ban- 
ners everywhere. 

At  eight  o'clock  the  first  through  train  that  ever 
carried  passengers  from  the  ocean  to  the  Lakes  pulled 
out  of  Piermont,  and  was  followed  seven  minutes 
later  by  the  second  section.  President  Fillmore  was 
on  the  first  section,  and  Webster  was  on  the  second, 
seated  in  a  comfortable  rocker  on  a  flat  car,  for  the 
rain  had  ceased  and  he  wanted  to  enjoy  the  scenery 
to  the  utmost. 

The  only  man  on  either  train  who  was  not  happy 
was  Gad  Lyman,  the  engineer  of  the  first  section. 
Gad  had  not  got  many  miles  out  of  Piermont  before 
his  engine,  a  Rogers,  No.  100,  manifested  unmistak- 
able symptoms  of  "  laying  down."  Under  any  condi- 
tions, this  would  have  been  mortifying,  but  the 
peculiar  circumstances  in  this  case  made  the  conduct 
of  No.  100  doubly  humiliating. 

In  those  days  there  was  a  fierce  rivalry  between  the 
different  makers  of  locomotives,  and  engineers  were 
not  infrequently  zealous  partisans  of  the  various 
manufacturers.  Some  months  previous  Gad  had 
been  given  a  new  Swinburne  engine,  No.  71,  just  out 
of  the  shop. 

Being  partial  to  Rogers  machines,  Gad  could  do 
nothing  with  the  new  Swinburne.  On  the  strength 
of  his  reports  the  71  was  condemned  as  worthless,  and 


98  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Gad  was  given  the  new  Rogers,  with  which  he  de- 
clared he  could  pull  the  Hudson  River  up  by  the  roots 
if  he  wanted  to. 

Josh  Martin,  another  engineer,  was  a  warm  per- 
sonal friend  of  Swinburne,  the  maker  of  the  71.  Josh 
asked  for  the  71  after  it  had  been  condemned,  and 
after  much  solicitation  was  given  profane  permission 
to  take  the  old  thing  and  go  to  blazes  with  it. 

On  this  memorable  day,  after  Gad's  vaunted  No. 
100  had  laid  down  on  a  little  hill,  a  messenger  was  sent 
to  a  siding  near  by  for  a  plebeian  gravel-train  engine 
to  help  him  into  Port  Jervis,  wrhere  he  arrived  an  hour 
late  and  inexpressibly  crestfallen  to  find  Josh  Martin 
waiting  with  the  71  to  take  his  train. 

Swinburne,  the  locomotive-builder,  who  was  on  the 
train,  hurried  forward  and  climbed  on  the  71.  Josh 
slapped  him  on  the  back  and  exclaimed: 

"  Swinburne,  I  am  going  to  make  you  to-day  or 
break  my  neck! " 

Josh  didn't  break  his  neck,  but  every  one  on  board 
the  train  was  fully  persuaded  his  own  neck  would  be 
broken,  for  Josh  covered  the  thirty-four  miles  from 
Port  Jervis  to  Narrowsburg  with  the  heavy  train  in 
thirty-five  minutes.  Such  a  record  as  that  had  never 
been  approached  in  the  history  of  railroading. 

Swinburne  was  in  raptures,  the  officers  of  the  road 
were  astounded,  and  some  of  the  distinguished  pas- 
sengers were  so  nervous  that  they  insisted  on  getting 
off  and  walking.  By  the  time  they  had  covered  the 
eighty-eight  miles  from  Port  Jervis  to  Deposit,  Josh 
had  made  up  the  hour  Gad  had  lost. 

At  every  station  along  the  route  there  were  cheer- 
ing crowds,  booming  cannon,  waving  banners,  and 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  99 

oratory.  Wherever  the  trains  stopped  long  enough, 
some  of  the  distinguished  guests  would  make  brief 
speeches.  As  the  observation  platform,  since  found 
so  convenient  in  National  campaigns,  had  not  then 
been  thought  of,  the  orators  held  forth  from  flat  cars 
attached  to  the  rear  of  the  trains  for  the  purpose. 
One  of  these  flat  cars  was  also  occupied  by  the  rail- 
road official  who  had  been  designated  to  receive  flags. 
By  a  singular  coincidence  the  ladies  at  every  one  of 
the  more  than  sixty  stations  between  Piermont  and 
Dunkirk  had  conceived  the  idea  that  it  would  be  as 
original  as  it  was  appropriate  to  present  a  flag 
wrought  by  their  own  fair  hands  to  the  railroad  com- 
pany when  the  first  train  passed  through  to  Lake 
Erie.  As  it  would  have  consumed  altogether  too 
much  time  to  make  a  stop  for  each  of  these  flag  pres- 
entations, the  engineer  merely  slowed  down  at  three- 
fourths  .of  the  stations  enough  to  allow  the  flag  officer 
to  scoop  up  the  banner  in  his  arms  much  like  the 
hands  on  the  old-fashioned  Marsh  Harvesters  gath- 
ered up  armfuls  of  grain  for  binding.  At  the  end 
of  the  journey  the  Erie  Railroad  had  a  collection  of 
flags  that  would  have  done  credit  to  a  victorious  army. 

The  party  reached  Elmira,  two  hundred  and 
seventy-four  miles  from  New  York,  where  the  night 
was  to  be  passed,  at  7  P.M.  As  the  President  alighted 
a  national  salute  was  fired.  There  was  an  imposing 
procession  to  escort  the  President  to  one  hotel  and 
Webster  to  another;  two  banquets  were  served,  with 
Downing,  the  caterer,  and  his  staff  helping  the  hotel 
men. 

All  night  long  the  streets  were  filled  with  enthusias- 
tic crowds.  Hospitality  was  unbounded,  and  many 


100  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

citizens  on  all  other  occasions  staid  and  sober  men 
grew  hilarious  as  the  night  wore  on.  Elmira  has 
never  had  another  such  night  as  that  which  marked 
the  opening  of  the  Erie  from  the  ocean  to  the  Lakes. 

At  6.30  A.M.,  on  Thursday,  May  15,  the  special 
trains  left  Elmira  for  Dunkirk,  where  they  arrived 
at  4.30  P.M. 

The  scenes  of  the  day  before  were  repeated  at  every 
station  along  the  way.  H.  G.  Brooks,  an  engineer, 
ran  his  locomotive  out  several  miles  to  meet  the  trains, 
which  had  been  consolidated  for  entering  Dunkirk, 
and  escorted  them  to  the  station  under  a  canopy  made 
of  the  intertwined  flags  of  the  United  States,  Eng- 
land, and  France. 

There  was  a  procession,  led  by  Dodsworth's  Band, 
to  the  scene  of  a  barbecue  for  which  the  whole  country 
had  been  preparing  for  weeks. 

There  were  two  oxen  barbecued,  ten  sheep,  and  a 
hundred  fowls ;  bread  in  loaves  ten  feet  long  and  two 
feet  wide,  barrels  of  cider,  tanks  of  coffee,  unlimited 
quantities  of  ham,  corned  beef,  tongue  and  sausage, 
pork  and  beans  in  vessels  holding  fifty  gallons  each, 
and  vast  quantities  of  clam  chowder. 

President  Fillmore  manifested  deep  interest  in  the 
pork  and  beans,  while  Webster  was  attracted  by  the 
clam  chowder.  He  was  something  of  a  specialist  in 
making  clam  chowder  himself,  he  said.  He  strongly 
recommended  the  addition  of  a  little  port  wine  to  give 
the  chowder  the  proper  bouquet.  After  several  din- 
ners in  as  many  different  places,  accompanied  by 
much  speech-making,  the  celebration  was  at  an  end. 

The  first  trunk  line,  an  unbroken  road  five  hundred 
miles  long,  from  tide-water  to  the  inland  seas,  was 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  101 

now  open  for  traffic,  but  that  was  about  all  that  could 
be  said.  It  began  nowhere,  ended  nowhere,  had  no 
connections,  and  could  have  none.  The  track  was  un- 
ballasted, and  the  rolling-stock  was  in  such  bad  condi- 
tion that  the  insecurity  of  travel  over  the  road  was 
notorious.  In  two  months  there  were  sixteen  serious 
accidents  on  one  division  alone. 

Part  of  these  anomalous  conditions  was  due  to 
peculiar  ideas  of  what  a  railroad  should  be  that  seem 
strange  enough  now  but  were  not  considered  peculiar 
in  those  early  days.  The  road  was  built  to  secure  for 
New  York  City  the  trade  of  the  southern  part  of  the 
State.  To  make  sure  that  none  of  this  trade  should 
go  to  Boston  or  Philadelphia  or  any  other  places 
which  were  casting  covetous  eyes  in  that  direction,  the 
Erie  was  prohibited,  under  penalty  of  forfeiture  of  its 
charter,  from  making  any  connections  with  any  other 
road. 

Even  if  connections  had  been  desired,  there  could 
have  been  no  direct  interchange  of  traffic,  because  the 
Erie  was  built  on  a  six-foot  gauge,  while  all  the  other 
roads  were  adopting  the  standard  English  gauge  of 
four  feet  eight  and  one-half  inches. 

When  the  railroad  had  reached  Middletown,  the 
chief  engineer  at  that  time,  Major  T.  S.  Brown,  after 
a  trip  to  Europe  to  study  the  best  railroad  practice 
there,  urged  a  change  of  gauge  to  four  feet  eight  and 
one-half  inches.  He  said  the  gauge  of  the  fifty-four 
miles  of  track  then  in  operation  could  be  changed  then 
at  a  cost  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars, 
but  his  recommendations  were  not  approved. 

When  the  Erie  was  confronted,  forty  years  later, 
with  the  alternative  of  changing  its  gauge  or  going 


102  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

out  of  business,  the  change  was  made  at  a  cost  of 
twenty-five  million  dollars. 

In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the 
problem  of  gauge  was  not  finally  settled  by  the  rail- 
roads of  the  United  States  until  1886.  Between 
May  22  and  June  2  of  that  year  upwards  of  twelve 
thousand  miles  of  railroad  in  the  South  were  changed 
from  wide  to  standard  gauge.  The  Louisville  and 
Nashville,  by  using  a  force  of  8,763  men,  was  able  to 
change  the  gauge  of  1,806  miles  of  main-line  and 
sidings  in  a  single  day. 

Notwithstanding  the  road  was  built  to  benefit  New 
York,  its  terminus  was  twenty-four  miles  away  from 
the  city,  and  the  company  had  refused  an  opportunity 
to  gain  an  entrance  over  the  Harlem  Railroad.  It 
didn't  take  long  for  some  shrewd  Jerseymen  who  were 
not  in  the  Erie  directorate  to  see  that  the  natural 
terminus  of  the  road  was  at  a  point  in  Jersey  City 
opposite  New  York,  and  but  a  very  little  longer  for 
them  to  preempt  the  only  practicable  route  by  which 
the  Erie  could  reach  that  point.  This  was  from  Suf- 
fern  through  the  Paramus  Valley  to  Jersey  City  via 
Paterson. 

The  Paterson  and  Hudson  Railroad,  from  Jersey 
City  to  Paterson,  and  the  Ramapo  and  Paterson  Rail- 
road, from  Paterson  to  Suffern,  were  duly  chartered. 
The  former  was  opened  in  1836,  the  latter  in  1848. 
The  Erie  might  refuse  to  connect  with  other  roads. 
But  no  legislative  fiat  could  prevent  a  passenger  on 
the  Erie  from  leaving  it  for  another  road  that  stood 
ready  to  save  him  twenty  miles  of  travel  and  an  hour 
and  a  half  of  time.  The  Erie  tried  every  device  of 
discrimination  in  rates  and  increased  speed  of  its 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  103 

boats  and  trains,  but  utterly  failed  to  convince  the 
traveling  public  that  the  longest  way  round  was  the 
shortest  road  home.  On  February  10,  1851,  the  Erie 
capitulated  on  terms  dictated  by  the  shrewd  Jersey- 
men,  taking  a  perpetual  lease  of  the  short  cut  to  the 
Metropolis. 

This  alarmed  the  people  of  Piermont,  who  peti- 
tioned the  legislature  to  come  to  the  rescue  of  their 
town  with  a  law  compelling  the  Erie  to  continue  to 
run  its  trains  to  that  out-of-the-way  terminus.  But 
the  legislature,  like  the  railroad,  gave  up  the  attempt 
to  prescribe  routes  of  travel  by  statute  and  left  Pier- 
mont to  oblivion. 

An  event  of  far  greater  historical  importance  in 
the  same  year  was  the  discovery  that  trains  could  be 
moved  by  telegraph.  Although  seven  years  had 
elapsed  since  Morse  had  sent  his  first  telegraph  mes- 
sage from  Washington  to  Baltimore,  capitalists  were 
still  scornfully  skeptical  of  the  investment  value  of 
his  wonderful  invention,  and  other  folk  were  more  or 
less  incredulous  of  its  practical  utility.  Such  oc- 
casional messages  as  were  sent  began  with  "  Dear 
Sir,"  and  closed  with  "  Yours  respectfully." 

No  one  dreamed  of  using  the  telegraph  to  regulate 
the  movements  of  trains.  The  time  card  was  the  sole 
reliance  of  railroad  men  for  getting  over  the  road. 
The  custom,  still  in  vogue,  of  giving  east-  and  north- 
bound trains  the  right  of  way  over  trains  of  the  same 
class  moving  in  the  opposite  direction  had  been  es- 
tablished. If  an  east-bound  train  did  not  reach  its 
meeting  point  on  time  the  west-bound  train,  according 
to  the  rules,  had  to  wait  one  hour  and  then  proceed 
under  a  flag  until  the  opposing  train  was  met.  A 


104  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

flagman  would  be  sent  ahead  on  foot.  Twenty 
minutes  later  the  train  would  follow,  moving  about  as 
fast  as  a  man  could  walk.  Under  this  interesting  ar- 
rangement, when  a  train  which  had  the  right  of  way 
was  several  hours  late,  the  opposing  train  had  to  flag 
over  the  entire  division  at  a  snail's  pace. 

On  September  22,  1851,  Superintendent  Charles 
Minot  was  on  Conductor  Stewart's  train  west  bound. 
They  were  to  meet  the  east-bound  express  at  Turner's. 
As  the  express  did  not  show  up  Minot  told  the 
operator  to  ask  if  it  had  arrived  at  Goshen  fourteen 
miles  west.  On  receiving  a  negative  answer  he  wrote 
the  first  telegraphic  train  order  ever  penned.  It  read 
as  follows: 

"  To  Operator  at  Goshen: 

"  Hold  east-bound  train  till  further  orders. 

"  CHARLES  MINOT,  Superintendent." 

Then  he  wrote  an  order  which  he  handed  to  Con- 
ductor Stewart,  reading  as  follows: 

"  To  Conductor  Stewart: 

"  Run  to  Goshen  regardless  of  opposing  train. 

"  CHARLES  MINOT,  Superintendent" 

When  Conductor  Stewart  showed  this  order  to 
Engineer  Isaac  Lewis  that  worthy  read  it  twice  with 
rising  amazement  and  indignation.  Then  he  handed 
it  back  to  the  conductor  with  lip  curved  with  scorn. 

"Do  I  look  like  a  d—  -  fool?"  snorted  Lewis. 
"  I'll  run  this  train  according  to  time  card  rules,  and 
no  other  way." 

Upon  hearing  of  this  Superintendent  Minot  used 
all  his  powers  of  persuasion  to  induce  Lewis  to  pull 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  105 

out ;  but  the  engineer  refused  in  most  emphatic  terms. 
He  wasn't  prepared  to  cross  the  Jordan  that  morning, 
so  he  proposed  to  abide  by  the  rules  in  such  cases  made 
and  provided.  No  other  course  being  open  Minot 
ordered  the  obstinate  engineer  down  and  took  charge 
of  the  engine  himself.  Lewis  took  refuge  in  the  last 
seat  of  the  rear  car,  where  he  would  have  some  show 
for  his  life  when  the  inevitable  collision  occurred, 
while  the  superintendent  ran  the  train  to  Goshen. 
Finding  by  further  use  of  the  telegraph  that  the  op- 
posing train  had  not  reached  Middletown  he  ran  to 
that  point  by  repeating  his  orders  and  kept  on  in  the 
same  way  until  he  reached  Port  Jervis,  saving  two 
hours'  time  for  the  west-bound  train. 

The  account  of  the  superintendent's  reprehensible 
conduct  when  related  by  Engineer  Lewis  caused  a 
great  commotion  among  the  other  engineers.  In 
solemn  conclave  they  agreed  that  they  would  not  run 
trains  on  any  such  crazy  system.  But  Minot  issued 
an  order  that  the  movements  of  trains  on  the  Erie 
Railroad  would  thenceforth  be  controlled  by  tele- 
graph, and  they  were. 

When  the  Erie  was  at  last  in  operation  from  Jersey 
City  to  Dunkirk  it  had  cost  $43,333  a  mile  exclusive 
of  equipment,  or  six  times  the  original  estimate  made 
in  1834,  yet  it  was  a  railroad  more  in  name  than  in 
fact.  Motive  power  and  rolling  stock  were  insuf- 
ficient and  dilapidated,  while  the  track  demanded  an 
expenditure  of  large  sums  before  traffic  could  be 
handled  with  profit. 

But  in  spite  of  all  its  drawbacks  this  first  trunk  line 
justified  the  enthusiasm  of  the  bride  which  expedited 
its  building,  and  even  justified  the  reckless  language 


106  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

of  President  King,  who  thought  "  Eventually  it  might 
earn  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year  on  freight " ; 
for  the  receipts  on  through  business  in  the  first  six 
months  after  the  line  was  opened  to  Dunkirk  were 
$1,755,285,  and  the  first  dividend,  4  per  cent,  was  de- 
clared for  the  last  six  months  of  1851. 

The  opening  of  the  Erie  to  Dunkirk  and  the  com- 
pletion of  a  through  route  from  New  York  by  way 
of  Albany  to  Buffalo  a  few  months  later,  upon  the 
opening  of  the  Hudson  River  Railroad,  completely 
revolutionized  travel  between  the  East  and  the  West. 
People  congratulated  one  another  on  the  comfort, 
safety,  and  cheapness  of  travel  with  which,  in  that 
progressive  age,  the  great  distance  between  the  Miss- 
issippi and  the  Atlantic  could  be  "  traversed  in  an 
almost  incredibly  short  space  of  time."  Before  these 
roads  were  opened  for  traffic  the  journey  from  St. 
Louis  to  New  York  was  a  formidable  enterprise 
which  nothing  but  the  most  urgent  necessity  could 
induce  any  one  to  undertake.  The  usual  route  was 
by  steamboat  to  Wheeling  or  Pittsburg,  thence  by 
stage  through  a  nightmare  of  rough  roads,  sleepless 
nights,  stiffened  limbs,  and  aching  heads  to  Baltimore 
or  Philadelphia,  thence  to  New  York. 

But  the  opening  of  the  Eastern  roads  and  of  a  road 
from  Cincinnati  to  Lake  Erie  reversed  the  current  of 
travel.  Instead  of  going  by  way  of  Baltimore  or 
Philadelphia  to  New  York,  nearly  all  the  traffic 
moved  to  Cincinnati  by  boat,  from  whence  New  York 
could  be  reached  by  rail  by  way  of  Dunkirk  or  Buf- 
falo in  less  than  forty-eight  hours,  and  Washington 
in  about  fifteen  hours  more.  This  was  less  time  than 
was  required  to  go  from  Cincinnati  to  Pittsburg  by 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  107 

steamboat.  The  routes  by  Wheeling  and  Pittsburg 
were  practically  abandoned,  while  travel  by  the  new 
railroads,  according  to  the  newspapers  of  the  day, 
became  "  almost  incredibly  great." 

Under  the  circumstances,  then,  such  superlatives 
as  these  from  the  American  Railroad  Journal  anent 
the  formal  opening  of  the  Erie  Railroad  to  Dunkirk 
seem  quite  pardonable: 

"  The  occasion  was  an  era  in  the  history  of  locomotion. 
Its  influence  will  at  once  be  felt  in  every  part  of  the  United 
States.  The  Erie  Railroad  is  the  grand  artery  between  the 
Atlantic  and  our  inland  seas.  Its  branches  compared  with 
other  trunk  lines  would  be  great  works.  .  .  .  The  New  York 
and  Erie  Railroad  lays  high  claims  to  being  one  of  the  great- 
est achievements  of  human  skill  and  enterprise.  In  magnitude 
of  undertaking  and  cost  of  construction  it  far  exceeds  the 
hitherto  greatest  work  of  internal  improvement  in  the  United 
States,  the  Erie  Canal.  When  we  consider  its  length,  which 
exceeds  that  of  the  great  railway  building  by  the  Russian 
Government  from  Moscow  to  St.  Petersburg ;  when  we  reflect 
upon  the  extensive  tracts  of  country  teeming  with  rich 
products  it  has  opened  up,  it  is  doubtful  whether  any  similar 
work  exists  on  the  earth  to  compare  with  it." 

Yet  Dunkirk  was  scarcely  more  satisfactory  as  a 
western  terminus  than  Piermont  as  the  eastern.  The 
struggle  to  create  a  railroad,  instead  of  being  at  an 
end,  was  only  begun. 

Although  the  first  public  meeting  to  create  the 
sentiment  which  ultimately  led  to  the  building  of  the 
Erie  was  held  at  Jamestown  in  1831,  when  the  road 
was  finally  opened  twenty  years  later,  that  town  was 
left  thirty-four  miles  from  the  line.  Being  deter- 
mined to  have  a  railroad  the  people  of  Jamestown  in 


108  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

May,  1851,  organized  the  Erie  and  New  York  City 
Railroad  to  build  from  Salamanca,  named  after  the 
Duke  of  Salamanca,  financial  adviser  to  Queen  Isa- 
bella, of  Spain,  who  was  instrumental  in  placing  a 
quantity  of  bonds  in  Spain,  through  Jamestown  to  the 
Pennsylvania  State  line. 

About  the  same  time  it  occurred  to  Marvin  Kent,  a 
manufacturer  of  Franklin,  Ohio,  that  the  real  ter- 
minus of  the  Erie  should  be  at  St.  Louis  through  a 
connection  with  the  struggling  Ohio  and  Mississippi, 
which  was  also  of  six  feet  gauge.  Acting  on  this  idea 
he  procured  a  charter  from  the  Ohio  legislature  for 
the  Franklin  and  Warren  Railroad  to  build  from 
Franklin  east  to  the  Pennsylvania  State  line  and 
south  to  Dayton.  A  formidable  obstacle  to  the  ex- 
ecution of  this  project  for  a  through  route  from  New 
York  to  St.  Louis  and  the  west  was  the  State  of 
Pennsylvania,  which  interposed  between  the  Franklin 
and  Warren  and  the  Erie  and  New  York  City. 
There  was  no  railroad  connection  across  the  State  of 
Pennsylvania  between  New  York  and  Ohio,  and  there 
was  no  prospect  that  there  ever  would  be  any  if  the 
selfish  jealousy  of  Erie,  Pittsburg,  and  Philadelphia 
could  prevent  it.  These  cities  had  resolved  that  all 
the  traffic  between  the  East  and  the  West  through 
Pennsylvania  should  pay  tribute  to  them. 

A  combined  lobby  from  these  cities  controlled  the 
legislature  and  so  effectually  prevented  all  the  numer- 
ous attempts  to  charter  any  railroad  that  threatened 
their  commercial  supremacy.  But  a  way  out  was 
found  even  from  this  hopeless  situation.  When  it 
was  made  an  object  to  the  Pittsburg  and  Erie  Rail- 
road that  company  stretched  its  privileges  to  cover  the 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  ERIE  109 

construction  of  a  "  branch  "  across  Pennsylvania  that 
would  make  a  connecting  link  between  the  New  York 
and  Ohio  roads  then  projected.  Following  the 
devious  ways  necessary  to  legalize  its  operations,  and 
hindered  by  the  delays  required  to  capitalize  it,  this 
"  branch  "  in  the  course  of  seven  years  became  first 
the  Meadville  Railroad  and  then  the  Atlantic  and 
Great  Western.  The  Erie  made  the  surveys  for  this 
connection,  which  would  have  been  so  helpful,  and 
promised  to  finance  it;  but  for  several  years  was  too 
desperately  hard  up  to  fulfil  that  promise. 

Not  until  the  assistance  of  James  McHenry,  an 
Irishman,  who  after  being  brought  up  in  America 
went  to  Liverpool  and  made  an  immense  fortune  by 
creating  the  first  trade  in  America  dairy  products,  had 
been  secured  were  the  funds  to  build  the  Atlantic  and 
Great  Western  forthcoming.  McHenry's  indorse- 
ment was  enough  to  give  the  road  good  standing  with 
English  investors.  Their  capital  was  lavished  on  the 
project  as  foreign  money  had  never  before  been  lav- 
ished on  anything  American.  Agents  were  kept  in 
Canada  and  Ireland  to  recruit  labor,  which  was  sent 
over  by  the  shipload  during  the  Civil  War. 

By  virtue  of  achievements  in  railroad  building  then 
unparalleled  the  first  broad-gauge  train  from  the 
East  was  able  to  enter  Cleveland  November  3,  1863. 
On  June  20,  1864,  a  special  broad-gauge  train  ar- 
rived at  Dayton  from  New  York.  From  Dayton 
connection  was  made  by  the  Cincinnati,  Hamilton  and 
Dayton  by  way  of  Cincinnati,  and  the  Ohio  and  Miss- 
issippi with  St.  Louis,  thus  opening  a  broad-gauge 
route  from  the  ocean  to  the  Mississippi.  The  Atlantic 
and  Great  Western  was  leased  by  the  Erie  January 


110  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

1,  1869,  and  thus  became  a  link  in  the  present  main 
line. 

Before  this  the  Erie  had  become  great  enough  to 
rouse  the  cupidity  of  rival  manipulators,  who  in  their 
struggle  for  possession  nearly  ruined  the  property. 
High  finance  was  then  a  new  art  and  its  methods  were 
crude. 

But  the  Erie  survived  it  all,  and  half  a  century 
after  it  was  ushered  into  Dunkirk  with  such  elaborate 
ceremony  it  had  developed  into  a  system  of  nearly 
two  thousand  five  hundred  miles  with  annual  earnings 
of  more  than  forty  million  dollars. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PENNSYLVANIA  AND  THE  PENNSYLVANIA 
RAILROAD 

PENNSYLVANIA  had  a  hard  struggle  to  be- 
come reconciled  to  the  railroad.  Perhaps  it  was 
arrogance  born  of  prosperity,  for  in  early  days  Phila- 
delphia was  the  foremost  city  of  the  nation,  and  the 
country  population  was  thriving;  perhaps  it  was 
something  deserving  a  less  charitable  characterization 
which  inspired  the  desperate  resistance  to  innovation. 

The  fact  remains  that  the  opposition  to  the  railroad 
in  the  Keystone  State  was  more  bitter  and  prolonged 
than  elsewhere.  As  a  result  Pennsylvania  paid  a 
higher  price  than  any  other  commonwealth  for  having 
the  blessing  of  rail  transportation  thrust  upon  her. 

The  plain  truth  is  that  the  good  people  of  Penn- 
sylvania were  strenuously  opposed  to  anything  that 
smacked  of  progress.  They  were  entirely  content 
with  pack  trains  winding  single-file  over  the  moun- 
tains between  Philadelphia  and  Pittsburg  in  charge 
of  men  who  carried  a  bag  of  parched  corn  and  venison 
for  food  and  slept  under  trees.  When  turnpikes  were 
proposed  a  vigorous  protest  was  raised  on  the  ground 
that  the  packers  and  horse  breeders  would  be  ruined. 
General  Alexander  Ogle,  member  of  Congress, 
started  a  campaign  of  education  which  was  notable  for 
plain  speaking.  General  Ogle  was  wont  to  tell  his 

constituents  that  one  wragon  would  carry  as  much  salt, 

in 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

iron  and  brandy  as  a  whole  caravan  of  half-starved 
mountain  ponies  and  that  "  of  all  people  in  the  world 
fools  have  the  least  sense,"  a  remark  which  was  open 
to  disagreeable  inferences. 

At  last  the  advocates  of  the  turnpike  had  their  way 
and  Conestoga  wagons  supplanted  the  pack  horse.  In 
1786  a  fortnightly  stage  coach  made  the  rounds  be- 
tween Philadelphia  and  Pittsburg.  In  1804  this  was 
increased  to  a  daily  service  and  the  wagons  began  to 
grow  numerous.  Taverns  sprang  up  every  few  miles 
along  the  way.  Thus  a  strong  vested  interest  soon 
grew  up  which  was  able  to  bring  a  powerful  opposi- 
tion to  bear  when  a  few  radicals  proposed  canals  as 
superior  to  turnpikes. 

The  clamor  of  opposition  to  progress  reached  a 
climax  when  the  extremists  attempted  to  maintain 
that  railroads  would  be  superior  even  to  canals.  The 
popular  view  was  succinctly  expressed  by  an  old 
Pennsylvania  Dutchman  who  was  listening  to  Gen- 
eral Simon  Cameron,  who  was  making  a  speech  at 
Elizabethtown  in  favor  of  the  proposed  railroad  from 
Philadelphia  to  Lancaster.  The  General  said  he 
hoped  to  see  the  day  wrhen  he  could  take  breakfast  at 
Harrisburg,  go  to  Philadelphia,  transact  business, 
and  return  to  Harrisburg  in  time  for  a  good  night's 
rest.  This  was  too  much  for  the  Dutchman,  who 
called  over  his  shoulder  as  he  turned  away  in  dis- 
gust: 

"  Simon,  I  always  knew  you  were  half  cracked,  but 
I  never  suspected  you  were  such  an  ass  as  to  talk  that 
way." 

Another  vested  interest  now  joined  the  alliance 
against  the  railroad — the  truck  farmers  in  the  out- 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  US 

skirts  of  Philadelphia.  They  said  if  a  railroad  were 
built  the  Lancaster  truck  farmers  could  ship  their 
potatoes  and  cabbages  to  Philadelphia  and  thus  set 
up  a  ruinous  competition  with  the  local  farmers.  In 
justice  to  the  Philadelphia  farmers  it  must  be  said 
that  their  forebodings  proved  to  be  only  too  well 
founded.  The  road  to  Lancaster  was  built  and  the 
Philadelphia  truck  business  was  destroyed  so  utterly 
that  the  farmers  had  to  cut  up  their  truck  patches  into 
town  lots,  any  one  of  which  sold  for  more  money  than 
the  whole  farm  could  earn  in  a  lifetime. 

John  Thomson,  who  up  to  that  time  had  always 
been  one  of  the  most  respected  citizens  of  Delaware 
County,  built  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  crude  wooden  rail- 
road in  1809  and  called  upon  his  neighbors  to  witness 
that  one  horse  could  pull  with  ease  a  heavier  load  on 
the  wooden  rails  than  two  horses  could  drag  along  the 
muddy  road. 

But  the  neighbors  told  John  Thomson  in  plain 
terms  that  he  was  a  fool ;  whereupon,  in  extreme  dis- 
gust, he  chopped  Pennsylvania's  first  railroad  up  for 
firewood  and  said  no  more  about  it.  That  is,  not 
until  his  son  John  Edgar,  then  a  year  old,  was  big 
enough  to  talk  to. 

Instead  of  sending  the  boy  to  school  and  giving  him 
a  chance  to  get  on  in  the  world,  John  Thomson  kept 
him  at  home  and  filled  his  young  head  with  fool 
notions  about  railroads  until  he  left  at  the  age  of 
nineteen  to  accept  a  position  as  engineer,  to  assist 
in  laying  out  and  constructing  the  first  impor- 
tant railroad  ever  operated  in  the  State  of  Penn- 
sylvania. 

He  stuck  to  the  job  until  as  chief  engineer  and 


114  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

president  he  had  extended  that  apology  for  a  railroad 
across  the  Alleghanies  and  then  to  the  Mississippi  and 
the  Great  Lakes,  developed  and  expanded  it  into  one 
of  the  greatest  transportation  companies  in  existence, 
and,  dying,  left  behind  him  immortal  fame  as  one  of 
the  foremost  constructive  geniuses  in  the  history  of 
the  railroad. 

While  young  Thomson  was  at  home  preparing  for 
his  life-work,  Pennsylvania  was  learning  things,  too. 
Summed  up,  the  lesson  was  that  no  community  can 
prosper  without  adequate  facilities  for  trade.  The 
opening  of  the  Erie  Canal  and  the  building  of  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  demonstrated  in  a 
rather  pointed  way  that  transportation  was  foremost 
of  those  facilities. 

Colonel  John  Stevens,  of  Hoboken,  who  wore  out 
his  life  trying  to  induce  people  to  build  railroads,  had 
applied  for  a  charter  to  build  a  railroad  from  Phila- 
delphia to  Columbia  in  1823.  Just  to  humor  an  old 
man  it  was  granted,  but  not  a  dollar  could  be  raised  to 
build  even  an  experimental  mile  of  road,  even  though 
Horace  Binney  and  Stephen  Girard,  two  of  the  fore- 
most conservative  business  men  of  Philadelphia,  per- 
mitted their  names  to  appear  as  incorporators.  They 
were  willing  to  lend  dignity  to  the  scheme,  but  lending 
money  was  quite  a  different  matter.  Other  charters 
were  granted  in  the  next  few  years,  but  nothing  came 
of  them  until  the  Philadelphia,  Germantown  and 
Norristown  Railroad  was  authorized  by  an  act  of  the 
legislature  approved  by  Governor  Wolf  February  17, 
1831. 

With  commendable  prudence  the  legislature  took 
care  that  the  incorporators  should  not  get  rich  too 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  115 

quickly  by  expressly  providing  that  the  dividends 
should  not  exceed  twelve  per  cent  per  annum.  In 
order  to  keep  the  profits  down  to  this  liberal  figure  the 
fare  was  limited  to  one  cent  a  mile.  All  this  legisla- 
tive caution  proved  to  be  unnecessary,  for  it  was  many 
years  before  the  road  paid  any  dividends  at  all,  even 
after  the  tariff  was  raised  to  two  cents  a  mile.  The 
road  was  opened  for  traffic  June  6,  1832,  with  "  nine 
splendid  cars "  according  to  contemporaneous  ac- 
counts, which  were  greatly  admired  by  some  thousands 
of  spectators. 

The  "  splendid  cars,"  as  a  matter  of  fact,  were  old 
Concord  stages,  provided  with  flanged  wheels  to  en- 
able them  to  stay  on  the  rails  and  footboards  along 
which  the  conductors  walked  to  collect  fares.  Horses 
furnished  the  motive  power. 

This  road  is  chiefly  interesting  from  the  fact  that 
the  building  of  "  Old  Ironsides,"  its  first  locomotive, 
laid  the  foundation  of  the  great  Baldwin  Locomotive 
Works.  Matthew  Baldwin,  the  builder,  was  a  watch- 
maker by  trade.  For  some  unexplained  reason  a 
curious  affinity  existed  between  watchmakers  and  loco- 
motives in  early  days.  Phineas  Davis,  who  built  the 
prize  locomotive  for  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio,  was  a 
watchmaker.  So  were  Stacy  Costell,  who  organized 
the  Pennsylvania  Locomotive  Works  in  1831,  and 
Ezekiel  Childs,  who  also  tried  his  hand  at  the  busi- 
ness. But  neither  made  a  success  of  it. 

Baldwin  made  himself  so  famous  by  building  a 
stationary  engine  to  run  his  factory  for  the  manufac- 
ture of  calico  printing  rolls,  for  the  sufficient  reason 
that  he  had  to  have  an  engine  and  could  not  get  a 
satisfactory  one  in  any  other  way,  that  his  friend 


116  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Franklin  Peale,  the  manager  of  the  Philadelphia 
Museum,  asked  him  to  build  a  working  model  of  a 
locomotive,  which  he  wanted  as  a  star  attraction  for 
his  museum.  Being  finished  and  placed  on  exhibi- 
tion on  a  circular  track  April  28,  1831,  this  model 
caused  a  great  sensation. 

Among  those  whose  interest  was  aroused  were  the 
directors  of  the  Germantown  Railroad,  which  had 
then  been  extended  to  a  point  six  miles  from  Phila- 
delphia. 

They  asked  Baldwin  to  build  a  full-sized  locomotive 
for  them.  Although  he  had  no  patterns,  no  machine 
tools,  and  no  experience,  and  there  were  but  five  me- 
chanics in  the  city  competent  to  do  any  part  of  the 
work  on  a  locomotive,  Baldwin  took  the  job.  The 
cylinders  were  bored  out  with  a  chisel  fixed  in  a  stick 
of  wood  turned  by  a  crank  worked  by  hand.  Six 
months  of  hard  work  were  required  to  finish  "  Old 
Ironsides."  On  November  23,  1832,  the  engine  was 
placed  in  service. 

There  were  no  brakes  on  cars  or  engine.  The  only 
means  of  stopping  was  by  reversing  the  engine,  a 
process  as  laborious  as  it  was  uncertain.  The  rock 
shaft  was  placed  under  the  footboard.  It  was  oper- 
ated by  treadles  worked  by  the  feet  of  the  engineer 
which  actuated  a  loose  eccentric  for  each  cylinder. 
To  reverse  required  two  distinct  operations:  first  to 
shut  off  and  then  throw  the  engine  out  of  gear  in  one 
direction;  next,  to  throw  it  into  gear  in  the  other 
direction — that  is,  provided  it  could  be  done.  But 
those  loose  eccentrics  were  the  most  nerve-racking 
devices  that  ever  tried  the  patience  of  a  long-suffering 
engineer.  They  responded  to  the  efforts  of  the 


0? 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  117 

treadles  when  so  disposed;  when  they  took  a  notion 
they  balked,  so  the  engine  could  be  moved  neither  for- 
ward nor  backward.  They  caused  the  poor  builder  a 
great  deal  of  anxiety. 

To  make  matters  worse  the  engine  weighed  seven 
tons  instead  of  the  five  tons  prescribed  in  the  contract. 
This  so  displeased  the  purchasers  that  they  would 
have  rejected  the  locomotive  but  for  the  strenuous 
efforts  of  Henry  R.  Campbell,  the  chief  engineer,  a 
friend  of  Baldwin,  and  James  Moore,  the  consulting 
engineer.  The  directors  finally  accepted  Old  Iron- 
sides, but  would  only  pay  three  thousand  five  hundred 
dollars  for  it  instead  of  the  four  thousand  dollars  they 
had  agreed  to  pay.  This  so  disgusted  Baldwin  that 
he  vowed  he  would  never  build  another  locomotive. 
But  the  Fates  had  decreed  otherwise:  he  never  did 
anything  else  but  build  locomotives  for  the  rest  of  his 
life. 

When  the  opening  of  the  Erie  Canal  had  suddenly 
diverted  Philadelphia's  trade  with  the  West  to  New 
York,  the  State  government  undertook  what  private 
enterprise  would  not  by  creating  a  Board  of  Canal 
Commissioners  to  construct  improved  avenues  of  com- 
munication with  the  western  part  of  the  State.  It 
was  agreed  that  canals  were  the  best  system  of  trans- 
portation, but,  owing  to  the  mountainous  character  of 
the  State,  railroads  might  have  to  be  built  to  fill  in  the 
gaps  between  canals. 

The  Board  of  Canal  Commissioners  were  careful  to 
have  it  understood,  however,  that  they  favored  rail- 
roads only  as  a  last  resort.  In  their  annual  report 
published  in  December,  1831,  they  stated  their  posi- 
tion thus  clearly: 


118  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

"  While  the  Board  avow  themselves  favorable  to  railroads 
where  it  is  impracticable  to  construct  canals,  or  under  some 
peculiar  circumstances,  yet  they  cannot  forbear  to  explain 
their  opinion  that  the  advocates  of  railroads  generally  have 
greatly  overrated  their  commercial  value.  To  counteract 
the  wild  speculations  of  visionary  men  and  to  allay  the  honest 
fears  and  prejudices  of  many  of  our  best  citizens  who  have 
been  induced  to  believe  that  railroads  are  better  than  canals 
and  consequently,  that  for  the  last  six  years  the  efforts  of 
our  state  to  achieve  a  mighty  improvement  have  been  mis- 
directed, the  canal  commissioners  deem  it  to  be  their  duty  to 
state  a  few  facts  which  will  exhibit  the  comparative  value  of 
the  two  modes  of  improvement  for  the  purpose  of  carrying 
heavy  articles  cheaply  to  market  in  a  distinct  point  of  view." 

After  giving  estimates  of  both  methods  of  transpor- 
tation, in  which  the  canal  appeared  to  much  greater 
advantage  than  the  railroad,  the  report  proceeds : 

"  The  introduction  of  locomotives  and  Winans  cars  upon 
railroads  where  they  can  be  used  to  advantage  will  diminish 
the  difference  between  canals  and  railroads  in  the  expense  of 
transportation.  But  the  Board  believe  that  notwithstanding 
all  improvements  which  have  been  made  in  railroads  and  loco- 
motives it  will  be  found  that  canals  are  from  two  to  two  and 
a  half  times  better  than  railroads  for  the  purposes  required 
of  them  by  Pennsylvania. 

"  The  Board  have  been  thus  explicit  with  a  view  to  vindi- 
cating the  sound  policy  of  the  Commonwealth  in  the  con- 
struction of  canals ;  yet  they  again  repeat  that  their  remarks 
flow  from  no  hostility  to  railroads,  for  next  to  canals  they 
are  the  best  means  that  have  been  devised  to  cheapen  trans- 
portation." 

The  Philadelphia  and  Columbia  Railroad,  eighty- 
two  miles  long,  was  the  eastern  link  in  the  chain  of 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  119 

State  works.  It  was  here  that  the  boy  Thomson  be- 
gan his  railroad  career  as  engineer. 

Work  was  begun  on  a  twenty-mile  section  at  each 
end  of  the  line  in  April,  1829.  By  the  end  of  the  suc- 
ceeding year  these  sections  were  ready  for  operation 
with  horses  as  the  motive  power.  April  16,  1834,  the 
locomotive  Black  Hawk  made  a  trip  from  end  to  end 
of  the  road,  a  single  track  having  been  completed  by 
that  time. 

This  was  merely  an  inspection  trip,  and  was  not  re- 
garded as  the  opening  of  the  road.  The  little  party 
which  made  that  long  journey  of  eighty-two  miles  can 
hardly  be  said  to  have  enjoyed  it,  for  the  Black  Hawk 
was  as  capricious  as  a  coquette.  When  it  felt  dis- 
posed to  go,  it  went;  and  when  it  felt  the  need  of  a 
little  rest  it  stopped  until  the  passengers  got  tired, 
when  they  would  get  out  and  push  the  sulky  machine 
along. 

They  found  consolation  in  the  fact  that  the  manage- 
ment had  taken  the  precaution  to  send  a  horse-car 
with  relays  of  horses  to  follow  them.  Although  the 
Black  Hawk  did  get  over  the  road,  the  trip  was  not 
regarded  as  a  triumph  for  steam. 

The  formal  opening  of  the  road  was  on  October  7, 
1834,  after  the  double  track  had  been  completed. 
Governor  Wolf  and  staff  left  Harrisburg  early  Mon- 
day morning  by  an  express  packet  on  the  canal,  which 
whirled  them  down  to  Columbia  at  the  rate  of  four 
miles  an  hour.  Next  morning  the  journey  to  Phila- 
delphia was  continued  by  rail. 

Governor  Wolf  was  idolized  by  the  people  because 
of  his  advanced  stand  on  the  questions  of  public 
schools  and  public  improvements,  and  he  may  have 


120  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

divided  honors  with  the  new  railroads  on  that  mem- 
orable day.  At  all  events,  there  was  a  holiday  all 
along  the  line. 

Men  left  shop  and  field  and  office;  women  their 
household  duties,  and  children  their  schools  to  cheer 
the  train,  and  there  were  speeches  from  the  rear  plat- 
form at  every  stop,  just  as  if  it  were  a  twentieth  cen- 
tury political  campaign. 

There  were  two  trains  into  Philadelphia  that  day, 
run  by  rival  companies :  the  Union  Line,  operated  by 
Peters  &  Co.,  and  the  People's  Line,  operated  by  Os- 
borne,  Davis,  Kirke  &  Schofield.  The  private  car- 
line  is  by  no  means  a  modern  innovation;  it  was  orig- 
inated at  the  very  beginning  of  railroads  in  Penn- 
sylvania. 

The  great  bugbear  of  the  people  three-quarters  of  a 
century  ago  was  monopoly,  just  as  it  is  to-day.  It 
was  considered  to  smack  too  much  of  monopoly  to 
have  a  railroad  on  which  cars  and  track  were  both  con- 
trolled by  the  State  or  by  a  corporation. 

The  original  idea  of  a  railroad  in  Pennsylvania  was 
a  sort  of  improved  turnpike,  to  be  kept  up  by  the 
State,  upon  which  any  one  who  owned  a  car  and  could 
pay  the  toll  was  free  to  come  and  go  at  his  own  sweet 
will. 

The  results  of  this  method  of  operation  were  more 
amusing  to  spectators  than  they  were  to  the  man  who 
wanted  to  get  his  car  over  the  road.  They  were  still 
more  unsatisfactory  when  the  Board  of  Canal  Com- 
missioners proposed  to  introduce  locomotives  which 
could  be  used  to  haul  trains  for  a  fee. 

This  revolutionary  step  roused  a  new  storm  of  op- 
position. Town  meetings  were  held  at  which  peti- 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD 

tions  to  the  legislature  for  and  against  steam  were  pre- 
pared. Thaddeus  Stevens  was  the  leader  of  the  op- 
position to  steam. 

Stevens  held  that  if  authority  to  purchase  locomo- 
tives and  thus  place  the  motive  power  of  the  railroad 
in  the  hands  of  the  State  were  granted  the  Board  of 
Canal  Commissioners,  its  patronage  and  power  would 
be  largely  increased  and  the  results  would  be  detri- 
mental to  the  interests  of  the  people. 

Under  pressure  from  the  prominent  men  of  his 
party,  fortified  with  a  promise  that  he  should  have  a 
chance  at  the  patronage  and  power,  Stevens  dropped 
his  opposition  and  an  act  was  passed  authorizing  the 
Board  of  Canal  Commissioners  to  purchase  locomo- 
tives. Under  this  authority  the  superintendent  was 
instructed  in  April  to  purchase  twenty  locomotives, 
to  be  ready  for  use  for  the  spring  trade  of  1835. 

E.  F.  Gay,  the  principal  engineer,  corresponding 
to  a  later  day  superintendent  of  motive  power,  re- 
ported on  November  7, 1834,  that  two  locomotives  had 
been  received  and  had  been  in  daily  use  for  some 
weeks.  These  were  the  "  Lancaster  "  and  the  "  Co- 
lumbia," both  built  by  M.  W.  Baldwin. 

Each  weighed  eight  tons,  and  had  a  four-wheeled 
truck  and  a  single  pair  of  drivers,  which  was  believed 
to  be  the  only  arrangement  that  would  take  the  sharp 
curves.  They  were  capable  of  hauling  forty-eight 
tons  gross,  or  thirty  tons  of  freight.  The  running 
time  for  seventy-seven  miles  was  eight  hours.  Fuel, 
oil,  and  wages  of  the  engineer  and  attendants  cost 
$14.60  a  trip. 

The  Lancaster's  performance  was  so  satisfactory 
that  it  was  regarded  as  the  standard  by  which  to 


123  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

gauge  other  locomotives.  It  was  in  continuous  serv- 
ice for  sixteen  years,  when  it  became  too  badly  worn 
out  to  be  worth  repairing  and  was  consigned  to  the 
ignominious  oblivion  of  the  scrap-heap.  The  Colum- 
bia had  met  the  same  fate  two  years  before. 

The  Board's  experience  with  English  locomotives 
wasn't  so  satisfactory.  Five  of  the  English  locomo- 
tives were  purchased  under  the  act  of  April,  1834. 
They  couldn't  pull  their  trains,  and  were  forever 
breaking  down. 

Finally,  they  were  sold  for  scrap-iron,  the  superin- 
tendent declaring  in  his  disgust  that  the  State  would 
have  saved  money  by  giving  the  English  machines 
away  as  soon  as  they  were  received. 

When  the  locomotives  were  put  in  service  the  fun 
began  in  earnest.  There  were  several  companies, 
called  transporters,  engaged  in  business  on  the  road, 
each  with  its  own  cars.  Some  made  a  specialty  of 
passengers,  others  of  freight. 

But  the  farmer  who  had  a  load  of  potatoes  to  take 
to  Philadelphia  was  still  as  free  to  come  and  go  on  the 
railroad  as  the  winds,  so  long  as  he  paid  the  wheel  tolls. 
There  were  no  turnouts  by  which  one  train  or  car 
could  pass  another. 

The  first  man  out  at  one  end  of  the  road  was,  there- 
fore, the  first  to  reach  the  other  end.  The  speed  of 
all  users  of  the  road  at  any  given  time  was,  therefore, 
regulated  by  the  slowest  car. 

Any  one  who  has  lived  in  a  city  where  the  police 
have  too  high  a  regard  for  the  tender  susceptibilities 
of  truck-drivers  to  enforce  the  ordinances  regarding 
the  use  of  the  streets,  and  who  has  been  compelled  to 
make  a  street-car  journey  at  the  rate  of  speed  adopted 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  123 

by  the  coal  wagons  and  drays  which  hold  the  track, 
can  fully  appreciate  the  joys  of  travel  on  the  Phila- 
delphia and  Columbia  Railroad  in  the  early  days. 

It  was  the  particular  delight  of  a  farmer  with  a  pair 
of  crowbaits  attached  to  a  dilapidated  four-wheeled 
car,  on  which  a  hatful  of  potatoes  bobbed  about,  to 
stop  every  few  miles  to  water  his  horses  with  extreme 
deliberation,  get  a  drink  himself,  light  his  pipe,  inquire 
of  a  neighbor  returning  on  the  other  track  the  price  of 
potatoes  in  Philadelphia,  look  his  car  over  and  whittle 
a  wooden  pin  to  stick  in  somewhere  to  keep  the  crazy 
thing  from  falling  to  pieces,  while  a  trainload  of  pas- 
sengers, drawn  by  a  locomotive  following  him,  fretted 
and  fumed  and  swore,  and  then  grew  apoplectic  with 
impotent  rage. 

Still,  railroad  travel  even  under  such  conditions  had 
its  compensations.  There  were  no  stations  in  those 
early  days.  The  roadside  inns  sprinkled  all  over  the 
country  at  intervals  of  a  few  miles,  in  response  to  the 
requirements  of  stage-coach  travel,  took  their  place. 
Coaching  customs  were  still  kept  up. 

As  the  stage  always  stopped  at  every  inn,  so  the 
trains  would  come  to  a  halt  whenever  they  passed  in 
sight  of  one.  All  hands — engineer,  firemen,  train- 
men, and  passengers — would  alight  and  trudge  across 
the  field,  leaving  the  train  deserted  on  the  main  line 
until  the  thirst  and  appetites  of  all  were  satisfied. 

Each  inn  carried  the  fundamental  necessity  of  life 
in  the  thirties,  to  wit,  whisky,  of  course;  but  in  addi- 
tion each  had  its  own  particular  specialty  by  which 
its  fame  was  spread  among  travelers. 

At  one  place  it  would  be  coffee  and  big,  fat  dough- 
nuts; at  another,  apple-pie  with  milk;  at  another,  waf- 


124  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

fles  and  fish ;  at  still  another,  chicken  fricassee  or  beer 
and  gingerbread,  and  so  on.  To  any  one  not  dys- 
peptic nor  in  haste,  therefore,  a  trip  over  the  Phila- 
delphia and  Columbia  Railroad  was  one  prolonged 
delight. 

This  happy-go-lucky  method  of  operating  the  road 
at  last  grew  intolerable.  The  Board  of  Canal  Com- 
missioners then  took  the  advanced  step  of  prescribing 
hours  when  locomotives  might  use  the  road.  The 
order  was  that  locomotives  might  leave  the  top  of  the 
Belmont  Plane,  which  was  at  the  Philadelphia  end, 
only  between  the  hours  of  4  and  10  A.M.  and  5  and 
8  P.M.,  the  last  to  leave  carrying  a  signal  to  indicate 
that  fact. 

This  left  a  period  of  seven  hours  during  the  day  and 
eight  hours  at  night  free  for  the  use  of  horses.  Be- 
yond this,  rules  for  running  were  conspicuous  by  their 
absence. 

There  was  a  continual  conflict  between  individual 
transporters  who  wished  to  use  horses  and  the  Board 
of  Canal  Commissioners,  who  wished  to  use  steam  and 
control  the  movement  of  trains.  Finally  the  Board 
took  the  bull  by  the  horns  and  prohibited  the  use  of 
horses  on  the  railroad  after  April  1,  1844. 

Meanwhile  improvements  were  being  made  in 
methods  of  railroad  operations.  A  great  advance  in 
carrying  mail  and  baggage  was  made  when  "  Possum 
Belly  "  cars  were  introduced.  The  "  Possum  Belly  " 
car  had  a  huge  box  or  cellar  beneath  the  floor  of  the 
car  into  which  mail-bags,  portmanteaus,  and  bundles 
could  be  thrust. 

Sam  Jones,  known  to  the  traveling  public  as  "  Gru- 
bey  Sam,"  a  deformed  negro,  the  first  of  his  race  to  be 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD 

employed  on  a  railroad  in  the  State,  had  charge  of  the 
"  Possum  Bellies,"  and  he  was  fully  aware  of  the 
dignity  and  importance  of  his  position.  But  he  was 
bright,  faithful,  and  alert,  so  he  made  more  friends 
than  enemies. 

Locomotives  necessitate  shops;  so  as  soon  as  the 
first  batch  of  twenty  engines  had  been  ordered  a  site 
was  chosen  for  the  first  railroad  shops  in  Penn- 
sylvania. The  location  chosen  was  in  a  field  midway 
between  Philadelphia  and  Columbia.  One  reason  for 
this  was  that  John  G.  Parke,  a  wealthy  and  influential 
man,  was  aggrieved  because  he  was  unable  to  collect 
a  claim  of  $3,273  for  damages  sustained  by  reason  of 
the  road  passing  between  his  house  and  his  barn. 

For  political  reasons  the  Board  could  not  afford  to 
incur  his  enmity,  so  they  accepted  his  offer  of  a  site, 
laid  out  a  town,  and  called  it  Parkesburg.  Work 
on  the  first  shop  was  begun  December  4,  1833. 

But  another  important  reason  for  locating  the 
shops  in  the  country  was  to  spare  the  shopmen  the  cor- 
rupting influence  of  the  engineers.  In  those  days 
enginemen  were  hard  to  get,  and  the  Board  had  to 
wink  at  peccadilloes  that  would  not  be  passed  over  so 
lightly  now. 

At  these  shops  safety  chains  were  first  put  on  be- 
tween engine  and  tender,  because  an  engine  while  on 
the  road  broke  away  from  its  tender,  spilling  the  fire- 
man and  engineer  to  the  ground  between  the  rails, 
where  both  were  torn  to  pieces. 

The  "  Grasshopper  level,"  four  miles  from  Lan- 
caster, was  responsible  for  another  important  im- 
provement in  locomotives.  The  place  was  so  called 
because  one  summer  the  grasshoppers  were  so  thick  in 


126  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

the  vicinity  that  they  wore  the  fence  rails  smooth  pass- 
ing from  field  to  field  in  search  of  food.  Also,  they 
were  so  thick  on  the  rails  that  the  locomotive  wheels 
slipped  on  their  crushed  bodies  and  the  trains  were 
stalled. 

Edwin  Jeffries,  the  manager  of  the  Parkesburg 
shops,  sent  out  men  to  pour  sand  on  the  rails  so  the 
locomotives'  driving-wheels  could  take  hold.  This 
suggested  putting  a  box  of  sand  on  the  front  end  of 
the  locomotive  for  the  convenience  of  the  men.  Then 
the  box  was  placed  on  top  of  the  boiler,  with  pipes 
running  from  the  box  to  the  rails  in  front  of  the 
drivers,  and  a  valve  in  the  pipes  which  could  be 
operated  by  the  engineer.  Thus  was  evolved  the 
sand-box  of  to-day,  and  also  that  favorite  story,  ever 
on  its  travels,  about  the  grasshoppers  stopping  the 
train. 

Jeffries  also  conceived  the  idea  of  putting  cabs  on 
the  engines,  but  the  men  at  first  refused  to  ride  in 
them.  They  were  afraid  of  being  trapped  in  case  of 
an  upset,  and  the  fear  was  not  groundless. 

The  rails  were  laid  in  chairs  on  stone  blocks,  and 
held  in  place  by  wedges.  Of  course,  the  wedges  were 
forever  working  loose  and  permitting  the  rails  to 
spread.  Derailments  were  of  frequent  occurrence, 
particularly  in  bucking  snow. 

In  spring  when  the  frost  was  coming  out  of  the 
ground,  heaving  the  tracks  in  all  sorts  of  kinks,  sev- 
eral trains  a  day  would  be  off  the  rails. 

There  were  no  telegraph,  no  telephone,  no  block- 
signals,  nor  even  any  headlights  on  the  engines.  The 
first  intimation  of  a  wreck  would  be  the  arrival  of  a 
messenger  on  a  farmer's  horse.  A  wrecking-crew  was 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  127 

kept  constantly  in  readiness  at  each  end  of  the  line  and 
at  Parkesburg. 

Experience  taught  in  due  time  that  it  wasn't  always 
necessary  to  wait  for  the  arrival  of  a  messenger  with 
news  of  disaster.  If  a  train  didn't  show  up  when  it 
should  the  wrecking-crew  would  start  out  in  search  of 
the  derelict,  with  two  men  riding  on  the  front  end  of 
the  locomotive,  who  would  take  turns  in  sprinting 
ahead  with  a  red  light  around  curves  as  a  precaution 
against  an  additional  wreck. 

While  the  Philadelphia  and  Columbia  Railroad  was 
being  built,  good  progress  was  being  made  on  the 
Alleghany  Portage  Railroad.  One  track  of  this  re- 
markable road  was  opened  November  21,  1833,  and 
early  in  the  spring  of  1834  a  double  track  was  com- 
pleted and  the  road  was  ready  for  traffic. 

When  the  engineers  in  laying  out  a  railroad  came 
to  a  hill  they  could  not  go  around  they  laid  a  line  of 
rails  straight  up  the  slope,  called  it  an  inclined  plane, 
and  placed  a  stationary  hoisting  engine  at  the  top  to 
haul  the  cars  up.  Even  the  Philadelphia  and  Colum- 
bia Railroad  had  an  inclined  plane  at  the  Philadelphia 
terminus  on  the  banks  of  the  Schuylkill,  with  a  length 
of  2,800  feet  and  a  rise  of  196  feet,  and  another  at 
Columbia  1,800  feet  long,  with  a  rise  of  90  feet.  The 
heaviest  grade  on  the  road  was  forty-four  feet  to  the 
mile. 

Engineers  took  it  for  granted  that  locomotives 
could  only  travel  on  practically  level  track,  just  as 
they  had  previously  taken  it  for  granted  that  the  driv- 
ing wheels  of  a  locomotive  or  a  steam  road  carriage 
would  revolve  impotently  on  the  rail  or  on  the  ground 
without  moving  forward. 


128  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

But  William  Norris,  a  brilliant  and  energetic 
young  locomotive  builder  of  Philadelphia,  Baldwin's 
most  formidable  rival,  built  a  locomotive  in  1836 
which  he  named  the  "  Washington  "  of  the  remarkable 
weight  of  fourteen  thousand  four  hundred  pounds. 
It  had  cylinders  ten  by  eighteen  inches  and  a  single 
pair  of  drivers  forty-eight  inches  in  diameter.  The 
boiler  carried  the  heavy  pressure  of  ninety  pounds  of 
steam. 

This  prodigy  performed  so  well  on  its  trial  trip 
that  Norris,  who  always  was  regarded  as  a  reckless 
person,  decided  to  see  what  it  would  do  on  the  inclined 
plane  at  Philadelphia,  on  a  grade  of  three  hundred 
and  sixty-nine  feet  to  the  mile.  To  his  unbounded 
delight  the  Washington  puffed  its  way  steadily  to 
the  top  of  the  plane.  No  one  would  believe  Norris 
when  he  told  what  the  new  locomotive  had  done. 
They  said  his  tale  was  a  fabrication  on  the  face  of  it, 
since  it  was  perfectly  obvious  that  a  locomotive  sim- 
ply could  not  ascend  an  inclined  plane  solely  by  its 
own  power.  Even  after  the  feat  had  been  repeated 
in  the  presence  of  many  witnesses  it  could  scarcely  be 
credited.  Eight  months  after  Norris  had  demon- 
strated that  a  locomotive  could  not  only  climb  an 
ascending  grade  by  its  own  power,  but  could  also  haul 
a  train  up,  A.  G.  Steere,  of  the  Erie  Railway,  in  a 
long  communication  to  the  Railroad  Journal  of 
March  11,  1837,  proved  by  elaborate  algebraic  for- 
mulas that  the  Washington  did  not  climb  the  hill,  be- 
cause it  could  not;  and  that  no  other  locomotive  ever 
could  climb  an  ascending  grade  by  its  own  power. 
Mr.  Steere  was  very  nice  about  his  exposure  of  Mr. 
Norris'  alleged  "  deeds  done  in  flagrant  and  open 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  129 

violation  of  the  laws  of  gravitation."  He  ex- 
plained the  motives  which  led  him  to  show  up  the  pre- 
posterous claims  as  follows: 

"  Accounts  of  the  very  wonderful  feats  said  to  have  been 
performed  by  Mr.  Norris'  engines  on  the  Columbia  Railroad 
have  not  been  noticed  by  scientific  men  from  the  fact,  I  sup- 
pose, that  the  errors  in  them  were  so  enormous  and  apparent 
that  they  supposed  they  would  be  detected  by  all  and  were, 
therefore,  not  worth  exposing.  But  the  mass  of  those  who 
read  these  accounts,  now  again  put  forth  as  facts,  and  who 
are  interested  in  railroad  improvements  are  not  scientific 
men ;  and  it  is  to  prevent  such  from  daily  quoting  and  swal- 
lowing absurdity  with  such  grave  astonishment  that  I  send 
you  the  following  exposition.  I  have  not  the  least  desire  to 
prejudice  the  community  against  Mr.  Norris'  engines,  which, 
I  have  no  doubt,  are  really  very  superior  ones,  but  I  do  not 
wish  capitalists  to  mistake  steep  roads  for  cheap  ones  or  to 
suppose  engines  are  going  to  draw  loads  which  are  really 
impossible  for  Mr.  Norris'  engines  or  any  others." 

This  was  the  opening  gun  in  a  long  and  earnest 
discussion  in  the  columns  of  the  Railroad  Journal 
concerning  the  possibility  or  the  impossibility  of  an 
engine  climbing  a  hill.  It  was  rather  difficult,  how- 
ever, to  maintain  that  a  thing  could  not  be  done  when 
it  was  being  done  daily,  and  the  controversy  finally 
died  out. 

As  the  real  development  of  the  railroad  dates  from 
the  astounding  discovery  that  locomotives  could  haul 
trains  uphill,  the  following  contemporary  account 
from  the  Railroad  Journal  of  July  30,  1836,  of  a 
trial  trip  made  by  Norris  with  his  locomotive  Wash- 
ington at  the  request  of  D.  K.  Minor,  the  editor  of 
the  Journal,  may  be  of  interest: 


130  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

"  In  pursuance  of  our  request  Mr.  Norris  made  arrange- 
ments with  the  Commissioners  of  the  Columbia  Railroad  for 
the  use  of  his  locomotive.  Tuesday,  July  19  [the  first  trial 
had  been  made  on  July  9  when  the  Washington  ascended  the 
plane  with  a  trainload  of  19,200  pounds  in  2  minutes  and 
one  second],  was  the  day  appointed  for  the  trial. 

"  We  left  New  York  Monday  afternoon  at  4  o'clock,  ac- 
companied by  Mr.  George  N.  Miner,  of  New  York;  Theo. 
Schwartz,  of  Paris,  and  Messrs.  Elliot  and  Betts,  of  Ala- 
bama. Mr.  Schwartz,  who  was  to  sail  to  Europe  next  day, 
gladly  made  the  trip  with  a  view  to  carrying  home  his 
testimony  as  an  eye  witness.  Our  journey  over  the  Camden 
and  Amboy  and  Trenton  and  Philadelphia  Railroads  was 
highly  interesting  and  the  conversation  of  the  evening  will 
long  be  remembered  with  pleasure.  We  arrived  at  Phila- 
delphia about  midnight,  and  after  sundry  mistakes  and  mis- 
chances succeeded  in  obtaining  some  repose. 

"  On  Tuesday  morning  two  cars  drawn  by  horses  set  out 
with  a  party  of  upwards  of  forty.  We  arrived  at  the  foot 
of  the  inclined  plane  before  6  o'clock  while  the  rails  were  yet 
quite  wet  with  the  dew.  On  our  arrival  it  was  found  that  by 
accident  or  design,  while  the  fire  was  burning  the  water  had 
been  blown  out  of  the  boiler  so  as  to  endanger  the  tubes. 
The  result  was  a  leakage  of  some  consequence  during  the 
day. 

"  The  engine  started  at  the  foot  of  the  plane  and  on  the 
plane.  After  proceeding  a  few  feet  the  wheels  were  found  to 
slip  and  the  engine  returned.  It  was  said  that  the  rails  were 
found  to  have  been  oiled  at  this  place;  but  a  small  quantity 
of  sand  was  strewn  on  the  spot  and  the  engine  proceeded.  She 
regularly  and  steadily  gained  speed  as  she  advanced  to  the 
very  top,  passing  over  the  plane  in  2  minutes  and  24  seconds. 

"  The  enthusiasm  of  feeling  manifested  cannot  be  de- 
scribed. So  complete  a  triumph  had  never  been  obtained. 
The  doubts  that  had  been  entertained  by  some  and  the  fears 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  131 

of  others  were  dispelled  in  an  instant.  The  eager  look  that 
settled  upon  every  one's  face  gave  way  to  that  of  confident 
success  while  all  present  expressed  their  gratification  in  loud 
and  repeated  cheers. 

"  The  length  of  the  plane  is  2,800  feet ;  the  grade  369 
feet  to  the  mile,  or  1  foot  rise  in  14.3  feet,  which  is  a  much 
steeper  grade  than  the  planes  on  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson 
Railroad,  those  being  1  foot  in  18,  making  an  ascent  of  196 
feet  in  2,800.  The  weight  of  the  engine  with  water  was 
14,930  pounds;  the  load  drawn  up  the  plane,  including  the 
tender  with  coal  and  water,  two  passenger  cars  with  53  pas- 
sengers, was  31,270  pounds;  steam  pressure  less  than  eighty 
pounds  to  the  square  inch ;  time  of  run  2  minutes,  24  seconds. 
It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  rails  were  wet  with  dew.  As 
to  the  oil,  it  was  afterwards  mentioned  that  bets  were  made 
with  the  workmen  to  a  considerable  amount  and  those  having 
been  lost  by  the  successful  performance  of  the  engine  on  a 
former  day  were  quadrupled,  and  to  save  themselves  it  is 
not  unlikely  that  this  means  was  provided  to  accelerate  the 
descent  rather  than  the  ascent  of  the  engine. 

"  The  party  again  embarked  after  examining  the  work- 
shops and  proceeded  to  Paoli  for  breakfast  and  thence  to 
Lancaster,  the  engine  conveying  at  the  same  time  a  number 
of  freight  cars.  The  unfortunate  location  of  this  road  is 
very  evident;  frequent  and  short  curves  are  introduced  so 
uniformly  that  it  would  be  supposed  that  such  a  location 
was  to  be  preferred  to  a  direct  one. 

"  We  arrived  at  Lancaster  and  partook  of  an  excellent 
dinner.  After  dinner  the  company  were  presented  to  Gover- 
nor Ritner,  who  was  then  in  town.  He  afterwards  accom- 
panied the  party  some  few  miles  from  Lancaster  when  he 
left  us  much  gratified  with  his  rapid  journey.  We  returned 
in  an  eight-wheeled  car,  a  form  that  we  much  admired.  The 
whole  weight  attached  to  the  engine,  tender  and  so  forth  in- 
cluded, must  have  been  over  fourteen  tons.  The  time  of  the 


132  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

run,  exclusive  of  stoppage,  from  Lancaster  to  the  head  of  the 
Schuylkill  inclined  plane,  was  3  hours,  11  minutes,  being  a 
distance  of  76  miles.  This,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  was  over  a 
road  having  curvatures  of  less  than  six  hundred  feet  radius, 
up  ascents  of  sometimes  45  feet  to  the  mile.  On  level  and 
straight  portions  of  the  road  a  velocity  of  forty-seven  miles 
an  hour  was  attained.  As  the  trip  had  already  been  pro- 
tracted this  engine  was  obliged  to  leave  on  her  return  to 
Lancaster  the  same  evening  and  we  descended  by  the  rope. 
We  returned  to  the  city  about  8  o'clock  in  the  evening  con- 
vinced of  the  success  of  our  host,  Mr.  Norris,  and  having 
in  the  language  of  one  of  our  party  '  lived  six  days  in  one.' 

"  The  following  are  the  dimensions  of  the  George  Wash- 
ington engine  of  William  Norris:  diameter  of  cylinders, 
10  1-4  inches;  length  of  stroke,  17  5-8  inches;  number  of 
tubes,  78 ;  outside  diameter  of  tubes,  2  inches ;  length  of  tubes, 
7  feet ;  diameter  of  driving  wheels,  4  feet ;  diameter  of  truck 
wheels,  30  inches;  whole  weight  of  engine,  14,930  pounds; 
actual  weight  on  drivers,  8,700  pounds.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  there  is  no  contrivance,  as  in  some  engines,  for  in- 
creasing the  adhesion  by  throwing  the  weight  of  the  tender 
upon  the  engines,  the  axle  being  in  front  of  the  firebox,  pre- 
venting any  such  arrangement.  This  engine,  we  are  in- 
formed, is  making  the  regular  trips,  though  a  full  load  has 
not  yet  been  obtained  on  account  of  a  scarcity  of  cars.  The 
greatest  load  as  yet  drawn  by  it  over  the  road  was  one  hun- 
dred and  nineteen  tons  gross  weight  in  twenty-two  cars." 

This  account  was  accompanied  by  a  certificate 
signed  by  fifty-three  passengers  attesting  the  fact 
that  they  had  actually  been  drawn  up  the  inclined 
plane  as  described.  Soon  afterward  Norris  built  the 
"  Washington  County  Farmer,"  weighing  18,170 
pounds,  for  the  Commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania, 
which  was  tested  on  the  same  plane,  according  to  the 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  133 

National  Gazette  of  October  19,  1836,  "  to  the  com- 
plete satisfaction  of  numerous  scientific  gentlemen  in- 
vited expressly  for  the  occasion."  The  time  required 
for  the  ascent  was  3  minutes  and  15  seconds.  In  de- 
scending, the  engineer,  according  to  the  same  author- 
ity, repeatedly  "  came  to  a  dead  stand  from  a  great 
speed,  and  for  some  minutes  played  up  and  down  the 
grade,  thus  proving  most  satisfactorily  the  great 
power  of  the  engine  and  the  perfect  safety  in  its  per- 
formance. The  engine  is  a  masterpiece  of  machinery 
and  of  beautiful  exterior.  The  result  here  obtained 
has  never  been  equaled  by  the  best  engines  in  this 
country  or  Europe,  excepting  only  similar  perform- 
ances of  the  George  Washington  engine  by  the  same 
maker.  The  advantage  of  this  great  improvement  in 
locomotives  is  self-evident.  Railroads  can  be  con- 
structed at  much  less  cost  than  heretofore  now  that 
engines  can  be  procured  to  perform  on  grades  of 
seventy  feet  or  even  a  hundred  feet  rise  in  the 
mile." 

So  little  did  the  general  public  understand  what  a 
locomotive  could  do  or  should  be  that  a  genius  named 
French  actually  induced  the  legislature  of  Virginia 
to  appropriate  a  sum  of  money  as  late  as  1850  to 
make  a  practical  test  of  his  locomotive  for  wooden 
railroads.  French  had  observed  that  wooden  rails 
would  not  answer  the  purpose  because  the  weight  of 
the  locomotives  broke  and  splintered  them.  As  he 
was  convinced  that  wooden  rails  were  much  better 
than  iron,  and  as  he  had  found  that  beech  and  maple 
rails  would  last  five  years  or  more  under  favorable 
conditions,  the  problem  was  to  adapt  the  locomotive 
to  the  rails  and  not  the  rails  to  the  locomotive.  He 


134  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

did  this  by  means  of  horizontal  driving  wheels,  which, 
by  means  of  a  lever,  were  made  to  grip  a  wooden  third 
rail  in  the  middle  of  the  track.  As  these  horizontal 
driving  wheels  held  the  locomotive  on  the  track,  the 
necessity  for  flanges  on  the  wheels  was  thus  done 
away  with  and  another  source  of  destruction  to 
wooden  rails  avoided.  George  E.  Sellers,  of  Cincin- 
nati, also  invented  a  "  gripping "  locomotive  that 
found  many  advocates. 

An  equally  brilliant  design  for  cars  that  could  not 
upset  was  evolved  by  one  Lawrence  Meyers,  of  Potts- 
ville,  Pa.,  a  year  later.  It  was  alleged  that  the 
Meyers  car  won  the  approval  of  President  John 
Tucker,  of  the  Reading  Railroad.  Meyers'  car  con- 
sisted of  a  cylinder  of  wrought  iron  42  inches  in  diam- 
eter, on  each  end  of  which  a  wheel  52  inches  was  riv- 
eted so  that  it  would  roll  along  the  track.  The 
cylinder  was  to  be  filled  with  coal,  of  which  it  would 
hold  two  tons.  Several  of  these  cylinders  being  con- 
nected by  means  of  a  wooden  frame  were  to  constitute 
a  "  Revolver  train." 

When  it  came  to  passing  the  Alleghanies,  the  engi- 
neer laid  out  a  succession  of  ten  inclined  planes  with 
"  levels  "  between,  on  which  the  grades  were  not  heavy 
enough  to  require  the  employment  of  a  hoisting  engine 
and  cable.  The  total  length  of  the  Portage  road  was 
thirty-six  miles. 

The  summit  was  1,398  feet  above  the  eastern  canal 
basin,  and  1,171  feet  above  the  western,  and  2,326 
above  sea-level.  The  longest  of  these  planes  was 
3,116  feet,  and  the  rise  was  307  feet.  The  most  con- 
spicuous features  of  the  road  were  the  Conemaugh 
Viaduct,  eight  miles  east  of  Johnstown,  which  was  de- 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  135 

stroyed  by  the  great  flood  of  May  31,  1889,  and  the 
Staple  Bend  tunnel,  nine  hundred  feet  long,  four 
miles  east  of  Johnstown.  This  was  the  first  tunnel 
built  in  America. 

The  engines  for  operating  these  planes  had  two 
cylinders  fourteen  inches  in  diameter  by  sixty  inches 
stroke,  made  fourteen  revolutions  a  minute,  and  at  a 
steam  pressure  of  seventy  pounds  developed  about 
thirty-five  horse-power.  They  hauled  cars  up  the 
planes  at  the  rate  of  four  miles  an  hour,  by  means  of 
ropes  eight  inches  in  diameter  and  from  3,316  feet  to 
6,662  feet  long.  These  ropes  were  the  cause  of  con- 
siderable outlay,  since  they  cost  on  an  average  three 
thousand  dollars  and  lasted  only  about  sixteen 
months. 

Toward  the  last  John  A.  Roebling,  the  great  bridge 
builder,  induced  the  Board  of  Canal  Commissioners 
to  experiment  with  wire  cable.  The  first  trials  were 
not  satisfactory,  but  a  little  investigation  showed  how 
to  overcome  all  difficulties,  and  then  wire  displaced 
hemp. 

To  run  each  of  these  planes  required  an  engineer 
at  $2.00  a  day,  a  fireman  at  $1.12^,  and  a  man  at  top 
and  bottom  at  $1.00  per  day  to  attach  and  detach  the 
cars.  On  reaching  a  level,  horses  or  a  locomotive 
would  be  attached  and  the  cars  hauled  to  the  next 
level  on  a  road  laid  with  malleable  iron  rails  imported 
from  Wales. 

The  use  of  horses  was  found  wasteful,  expensive, 
slow,  and  unsatisfactory,  so  before  the  second  track 
was  finished  the  Board  had  ordered  a  first  instalment 
of  a  couple  of  locomotives.  But  the  use  of  horses 
by  individual  transporters  continued  until  1850,  with 


136  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

the  same  results  as  on  the  Philadelphia  and  Columbia 
Railroad. 

No  two  teamsters  wanted  to  start  at  the  same  time, 
and  no  two  were  willing  to  stop  at  the  same  place  to 
feed.  These  teamsters  were  an  exceedingly  difficult 
lot  of  men  to  handle.  They  were  rough,  quarrelsome, 
stubborn,  and  unmanageable,  fearing  neither  man  nor 
fiend.  It  was  impossible  to  get  them  to  regulate 
their  movements  by  a  time  table.  The  officers  of  the 
road  had  no  power  to  discharge  them  or  keep  them 
off  the  road,  so  they  worked  their  own  sweet  will,  for 
was  not  the  railroad  a  public  highway  provided  by  the 
State,  and  were  they  not  as  good  citizens  as  any  other 
man,  if  not  better? 

It  sometimes  happened  that  a  teamster  would  get 
stalled  so  that  he  could  not  go  forward.  Being  too 
stubborn  to  go  back,  he  would  stay  where  he  was, 
blocking  the  entire  road,  perhaps  for  hours,  until  a 
better  man  came  along  and  thrashed  him  into  a  rea- 
sonable frame  of  mind.  Theoretically  an  unruly 
teamster  could  be  arrested  for  obstructing  the  rail- 
road and  taken  before  a  magistrate,  who  might  fine 
him.  But  as  the  magistrates  were  miles  away,  and 
an  arrest  meant  a  fight  first,  such  extreme  measures 
were  not  often  resorted  to. 

When  the  road  was  first  opened  it  had  but  a  single 
track.  In  order  to  keep  it  in  operation  at  all  it  was 
necessary  to  set  up  center  posts  half-way  between 
turnouts  and  make  a  rule  that  the  man  who  passed 
the  center  post  had  the  right  to  proceed  in  case  of 
meeting  a  team  going  in  the  opposite  direction,  which 
would  have  to  go  back  to  a  turnout.  This  caused 
the  drivers,  who  were  always  reluctant  to  turn  back, 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  137 

and  never  did  so  if  they  could  bully  the  other  fellow 
who  had  the  right  of  way  into  doing  so,  to  start  slowly 
in  leaving  a  turnout  so  they  might  not  have  to  return 
so  far.  As  they  proceeded  they  would  increase  their 
speed  until  by  the  time  they  reached  the  center  post 
the  horses  would  be  going  at  a  wild  gallop,  with 
drivers  plying  the  lash,  shouting,  and  swearing. 
Sometimes  cars  collided  near  a  center  post  while  go- 
ing at  high  speed,  wrecking  both  cars  and  tying  up 
traffic  until  the  wreckage  could  be  cleared  away.  In 
one  of  these  collisions  a  man  was  killed. 

Even  after  the  road  was  double-tracked  the  situa- 
tion became  so  intolerable  that  S.  W.  Roberts,  the 
chief  engineer,  determined  to  have  conditions  changed 
if  possible.  A  change  could  only  be  brought  about 
by  legislation,  which  was  not  easy  to  obtain.  The 
State  was  Democratic,  and  the  methods  then  in  use 
of  allowing  every  man  to  do  as  he  pleased  were  con- 
sidered to  be  the  popular  way  to  operate  a  railroad. 
The  proposal  to  exclude  private  transporters  from  the 
Portage  Railroad  and  operate  it  by  the  State  met  with 
the  most  vehement  opposition,  both  from  the  public 
and  the  legislature.  Roberts  finally  had  his  way 
when  he  won  Thaddeus  Stevens,  who  bossed  the 
Pennsylvania  legislature  as  he  afterwards  did  Con- 
gress, to  his  view  of  the  way  a  railroad  should  be  oper- 
ated. The  average  load  on  the  cars  was  six  thou- 
sand pounds,  and  the  cost  of  moving  freight  over  the 
Portage  road  averaged  ninety-six  cents  a  ton.  Five 
minutes  were  consumed  in  going  up  or  down  the 
longest  plane,  and  three  minutes  more  were  required 
to  attach  and  detach  the  cars. 

The  limit  of  capacity  was  five  hundred  and  seventy- 


138  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

six  cars  one  way  in  twenty-four  hours.  In  the  six 
months  ending  October  31,  1836,  19,171  passengers 
and  37,087  tons  of  freight  passed  over  the  Portage 
road. 

Charles  Dickens  made  a  trip  over  the  Portage  road 
in  1842,  and  was  delighted  with  the  experience,  which 
he  describes  in  his  "  American  Notes."  But,  then, 
Dickens  was  not  accustomed  to  Pullmans.  If  he  had 
been,  he  would  hardly  have  been  enraptured  with  a 
journey  that  consumed  seven  hours  in  traversing 
thirty-six  miles. 

With  the  Portage  road  open  it  was  possible  to  make 
the  journey  of  395  miles  from  Philadelphia  to  Pitts- 
burg,  on  public  works,  118  miles  being  by  rail  and 
277  on  canals,  in  91  hours,  or  an  average  of  4.34  miles 
an  hour.  The  fare  was  fifteen  dollars.  In  both  time 
and  expense  even  this  was  a  decided  advance  on  the 
stage  coach,  which  required  seven  days  to  make  the 
trip,  and  cost  the  passenger  twenty  dollars  for  fare 
and  eight  dollars  and  twenty-one  cents  for  meals  en 
route.  For  twenty  years  the  Pennsylvania  Public 
Improvements  were  an  important  trade  route. 

Some  time  after  the  Portage  road  was  opened  an 
emigrant,  who  had  loaded  his  family  and  all  his 
earthly  possessions  on  a  boat  on  the  Susquehanna, 
arrived  at  Hollidaysburg  on  his  way  to  Missouri. 
He  was  going  to  sell  his  boat  and  continue  his  journey 
as  best  he  could;  but  the  accommodating  superin- 
tendent of  the  Portage  Railroad  told  him  to  wait  a 
minute,  and  he'd  see  what  he  could  do. 

In  a  couple  of  hours  he  had  rigged  up  a  sort  of 
cradle  on  a  couple  of  cars,  which  were  run  into  the 
water  under  the  boat.  The  latter  was  fastened  to  the 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  139 

cars,  which  were  attached  to  the  cable,  and  away  went 
boat,  emigrant,  and  all  over  the  mountains.  In  due 
time  the  boat  was  deposited  in  the  canal  at  Johns- 
town. 

This  incident  led  to  the  building  of  canal  boats  in 
sections  and  of  trucks  to  transport  the  sections  over 
the  mountains,  thus  avoiding  the  expense  and  delay 
of  breaking  bulk  on  each  side  of  the  mountains.  To 
move  one  of  these  sectional  boats  over  the  mountains 
required  the  services  of  twelve  stationary  engines, 
twelve  different  teams  of  horses,  nine  locomotives — 
thirty-three  changes  of  power  in  thirty-six  miles — 
and  fifty-four  men. 

While  this  line  from  Philadelphia  to  Pittsburg 
was  being  constructed,  the  link  which  was  to  extend 
the  line  to  New  York  was  being  evolved  out  of  a  chaos 
of  conflicting  interests  and  financial  difficulties.  New 
Jersey  was  just  as  much  wrought  up  over  the  relative 
merits  of  canals  and  railroads  as  any  other  common- 
wealth. 

In  fact,  it  reached  a  point  in  the  winter  of  1829- 
1830  at  Trenton  when  partisans  of  either  side  were 
afraid  to  venture  out  after  dark  unarmed.  The  legis- 
lature poured  oil  on  the  stormy  waters  by  chartering 
simultaneously  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Railroad 
and  the  Delaware  and  Raritan  Canal  to  open  com- 
munication between  Philadelphia  and  New  York. 

In  order  that  the  companies  might  be  able  to  offer 
inducements  to  capital  the  legislature  granted  each  a 
monopoly  in  its  own  line  of  construction. 

Grading  on  the  railroad  was  begun  at  Borden- 
town,  December  1,  1830.  That  made  the  canal  peo- 
ple jealous,  and  in  spite  of  all  pledges  to  keep  to  their 


140  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

own  specialty  they  insisted  on  building  a  railroad  also. 
There  was  another  battle  of  the  lobby  at  the  legisla- 
tive session  of  1830-1831,  which  was  so  virulent  as  to 
endanger  the  existence  of  both  companies. 

This  contest  also  ended  in  a  compromise  by  which 
the  two  companies  were  merged  under  the  famous 
"  marriage  act  "  of  February  15,  1831. 

Enough  track  was  laid  to  enable  the  company  to 
give  an  exhibition  trip  November  12,  1831,  behind 
one  of  the  many  John  Bull  locomotives,*  which  were 
almost  as  numerous  as  Washington's  headquarters. 
The  first  woman  who  ever  rode  on  a  railroad  on  New 
Jersey  soil  was  a  guest  on  this  occasion.  She  was 
Mme.  Murat,  wife  of  Prince  Murat,  Napoleon's 
nephew. 

*  Of  the  numerous  "  John  Bull "  locomotives,  this  one,  the  oldest 
complete  locomotive  in  America,  has  at  last  come  to  be  known  as  the 
John  Bull.  It  is  not  a  model  nor  a  reproduction  but  the  original  engine. 
The  picture  on  the  opposite  page  is  from  a  photograph  made  at  the 
World's  Columbian  Exposition  in  1893. 

Originally  the  John  Bull  was  locomotive  No.  1  built  by  Stephenson 
&  Co.  in  1830-1  for  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Railroad,  now  a  part  of  the 
Pennsylvania  system.  It  was  shipped  from  Liverpool  July  14,  1831,  and 
made  its  first  trip  in  regular  service  November  12,  1831. 

The  John  Bull  and  its  train  was  exhibited  at  the  Centennial  Exposition 
in  Philadelphia  in  1876.  On  April  17,  1893,  the  engine  with  train,  as 
shown  in  the  picture,  left  New  York  City  under  its  own  steam  and 
made  the  run  of  912  miles  over  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  to  Chicago, 
meeting  with  a  continuous  ovation  throughout  the  trip,  and  arriving 
April  22.  It  was  one  of  the  greatest  attractions  at  the  World's  Fair, 
carrying  thousands  of  passengers  over  the  exhibition  tracks  in  the 
Terminal  Station  yard.  The  locomotive  left  Chicago  under  its  own 
steam  again  December  6,  1893,  going  over  the  Pennsylvania  system  by 
way  of  Harrisburg  and  Baltimore  to  Washington.  Having  made  its 
last  trip  under  steam  it  was  returned  to  the  United  States  National 
Museum  to  remain  there  permanently. 

The  two  Camden  and  Amboy  coaches  shown  are  of  the  model  of  1836. 
One  is  the  original  car,  the  body  of  which  was  used  as  a  chicken  coop 
at  South  Amboy,  N.  J.,  for  many  years. 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  141 

Mme.  Murat  was  the  daughter  of  Colonel  Frazier, 
a  Scotch  officer  who,  while  serving  in  the  British  ar-iy 
in  the  Revolution,  fell  madly  in  love  with  a  beautiful 
Virginia  girl,  and  returned  and  married  her  as  soon 
as  he  could  give  up  his  commission. 

The  directors  of  the  New  Jersey  Railroad  and 
Transportation  Company  issued  an  address  on  Jan- 
uary 1,  1839,  in  which  they  congratulated  themselves 
and  the  public  on  the  opening  of  an  all-rail  line  from 
Camden  to  Jersey  City,  by  which  it  was  possible  to 
go  from  Philadelphia  to  New  York  in  six  or  seven 
hours  with  almost  as  much  comfort  as  the  traveler 
could  have  at  his  own  fireside,  whereas  the  journey 
had  formerly  required  eleven  to  twenty  hours,  and 
had  been  made  at  the  expense  of  great  discomfort  and 
even  hazard  to  life. 

Another  important  link  in  the  State  system  of 
railroads,  destined  later  to  become  a  part  of  the  great 
Pennsylvania  system,  was  the  Cumberland  Valley 
Railroad,  which  was  formally  opened  from  Harris- 
burg  to  Chambersburg,  Thursday,  November  16, 
1837.  A  double-header  was  run  over  the  road  to 
accommodate  the  great  number  of  guests. 

Shouts  of  welcome  greeted  the  train  at  every  rev- 
olution of  the  wheels.  The  people  were  wild  with 
delight.  Here  is  the  way  the  Carlisle  Republican 
described  the  trip  of  that  first  train: 

"  Dogs  dropped  their  tails  between  their  legs  and  ran  like 
frightened  fiends,  howling  and  trembling,  to  the  far-off  moun- 
tains. Men  there  were  who  cleared  ditches  and  fences  at  a 
single  bound  as  the  hissing  engines  approached.  Others 
rolled  on  the  ground  and  cracked  their  heels  together  to  ex- 
press in  a  new  way  a  new  delight. 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

"  Old  men  and  women  leaned  on  their  staffs  and  gazed  in 
visible  awe  as  if  doomsday  were  at  hand.  Blooming  maidens 
capered  and  danced  and  looked  with  more  delight  on  the  grim 
and  besooted  countenance  of  the  steam  demon  than  ever  they 
did  on  clean-washed  lovers  dressed  in  Sunday  clothes." 

While  the  Board  of  Canal  Commissioners  was  pub- 
lishing assurances  that  the  system  of  canals  and  rail- 
roads built  under  its  direction,  at  an  expenditure  of 
nearly  twenty  million  dollars,  placed  Pennsylvania  on 
an  eminence  where  there  could  be  no  apprehension  of 
rivalry  from  sister  States,  the  people  were  growing 
more  and  more  dissatisfied. 

The  management  of  the  State  railroads  and  canals 
had  become  a  public  scandal.  The  paymaster  openly 
counted  out  ten  per  cent  of  the  wages  of  the  em- 
ployees, which  he  tossed  into  a  bag  at  his  side  labeled 
"  political  assessments."  Gravel  trains  loaded  with 
men  were  run  over  the  road  on  election  day,  the  men 
getting  off  at  every  town  and  voting. 

The  public  service  was  fairly  swamped  with  em- 
ployees whose  chief  duties  were  to  draw  their  salaries 
and  vote.  Transporters  who  refused  to  do  the  bid- 
ding of  the  party  in  power  were  ruined,  while  the 
more  complaisant  received  rebates  equal  to  the 
amount  of  the  tolls  they  had  paid. 

The  pass  system  originated  in  Pennsylvania  under 
State  ownership  of  the  railroads.  At  first  the  State 
officials  claimed  the  right  to  travel  over  the  State 
highways  free  of  charge.  Then  county  officials 
claimed  the  same  right,  then  politicians  were  unable 
to  see  why  they  should  pay,  and  so  it  went  on  until 
more  deadheads  than  paying  passengers  were  being 
carried. 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  143 

Thaddeus  Stevens,  who  had  been  so  apprehensive 
of  the  dangers  of  putting  locomotives  on  the  State 
railroads  on  account  of  the  patronage  they  would 
place  in  control  of  the  party  in  power,  on  being  made 
chairman  of  the  Board  of  Canal  Commissioners  at 
once  proceeded  to  demonstrate  that  his  fears  were  well 
founded. 

He  owned  some  iron  lands  in  the  southern  part  of 
the  State  to  which  he  undertook  to  build  a  railroad, 
which  was  so  wildly  impracticable  and  so  devious  that 
it  is  known  in  history  as  "  Stevens's  tapeworm."  He 
spent  three-quarters  of  a  million  dollars  of  State 
money  on  it  before  he  was  deposed,  not  one  dollar 
of  which  was  ever  of  any  earthly  benefit  to  the  State. 

But  the  worst  of  it  all  was  that  the  State  was  not 
reaping  the  commercial  benefits  expected.  In  addi- 
tion to  mismanagement  the  canals  were  frozen  over 
and  useless  in  winter.  Philadelphia,  as  well  as  other 
parts  of  the  State,  was  steadily  falling  behind. 

A  mass-meeting  was  held  in  the  Chinese  Museum 
building,  Philadelphia,  December  10,  1845,  at  whicli 
a  memorial  was  prepared  asking  the  legislature  to 
charter  a  private  railroad  corporation  to  build  a  rail- 
road system  that  would  be  up  with  the  times. 

There  was  a  savage  fight  in  the  legislature  that 
winter,  for  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  wanted  to  build  to 
Pittsburg,  and  the  people  of  the  southern  and  west- 
ern parts  of  the  State,  who  felt  that  they  had  been 
badly  treated  by  the  State  Board,  favored  the  Balti- 
more and  Ohio  project. 

The  outcome  was  a  charter  for  both  roads,  but  the 
Governor  was  authorized  to  give  preference  to  the 
Pennsylvania  Company  if  it  should  have  one  million 


144  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

dollars  in  the  treasury  and  thirty  miles  under  con- 
tract by  July  30, 1847,  by  annulling  the  charter  of  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio. 

The  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company  was  organ- 
ized March  31,  1847,  and  J.  Edgar  Thomson,  son  of 
the  man  who  had  built  the  little  wooden  railroad 
thirty-eight  years  before,  was  made  chief  engineer 
and  general  manager.  Ground  was  broken  for  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  at  Harrisburg,  its  eastern 
terminus,  July  7,  1847.  Connection  was  made  with 
the  Portage  Railroad,  November  1,  1850. 

Trains  were  run  from  Philadelphia  to  Pittsburg, 
December  10,  1852,  by  the  Philadelphia  and  Colum- 
bia Railroad  and  the  Alleghany  Portage  Railroad. 
A  line  through  the  mountains,  to  cut  out  the  Portage 
road,  was  not  completed  till  February  2,  1854. 

As  soon  as  the  engineering  difficulties  were  solved 
and  the  construction  department  was  running 
smoothly,  Thomson  was  called  to  the  president's 
chair  to  create  an  effective  working  organization. 

Mr.  Thomson  was  a  man  of  splendid  physique  and 
a  tireless  worker.  He  talked  little,  but  was  a  good 
listener.  Above  all,  he  had  the  gift  of  selecting  the 
right  man  to  do  a  given  task. 

A  remarkable  example  of  this  is  shown  in  his  choice 
of  a  man  to  establish  that  discipline  and  esprit  de 
corps  for  which  the  Pennsylvania  Company  is  so 
famous  that  to  this  day  it  is  held  up  as  the  apotheosis 
of  all  that  is  desirable  in  a  railroad  staff. 

This  work  fell  upon  General  A.  L.  Roumfort,  who 
was  born  in  Paris,  educated  at  West  Point,  had  con- 
ducted a  military  school  in  which  some  of  the  most 
prominent  men  of  their  time  were  educated,  had  been 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  145 

a  member  of  the  legislature  for  several  terms,  and 
finally  had  filled  the  position  of  superintendent  of  the 
Philadelphia  and  Columbia  Railroad.  He  was  six 
feet  tall  and  built  in  proportion.  He  had  a  military 
bearing  and  dignified  manner. 

His  first  task  was  to  create  an  orderly  baggage  sys- 
tem out  of  the  chaos  at  Aqueduct  and  Harrisburg. 
During  the  spring  freshets  swarms  of  raftsmen 
passed  over  the  road,  leaving  at  Aqueduct  to  proceed 
up  the  Susquehanna.  They  were  rough,  boisterous, 
and  lawless.  Their  baggage  consisted  of  stoves,  pots, 
pans,  rope,  carpet-bags,  bundles  of  clothing,  and  pro- 
visions and  chests. 

General  Roumfort's  appearance  commanded  re- 
spect and  obedience.  He  established  order  at  Aque- 
duct and  he  created  system  where  confusion  had 
reigned  in  the  baggage  department.  He  attempted 
to  uniform  the  trainmen.  Passenger  conductors 
were  required  to  appear  in  blue  cutaway  coats  with 
brass  buttons,  buff  vests,  and  black  trousers,  and 
passengers  brakemen  in  gray  sack  suits ;  but  the  plan 
was  not  popular  and  when  the  first  suits  wore  out 
they  were  not  replaced  until  the  Civil  War  had  earned 
respect  for  uniforms. 

General  Roumfort's  favorite  seat  in  fair  weather 
was  on  a  corner  of  the  second-story  porch  of  the  old 
station  at  Harrisburg,  where  he  could  hear  the  whistle 
of  the  approaching  trains. 

There  was  a  bell  in  a  little  tower  on  the  top  of  the 
depot,  which  was  rung  to  announce  the  arrival  and 
departure  of  trains.  As  soon  as  the  whistle  was 
heard  General  Roumfort's  sonorous  voice  would  wake 
the  echoes. 


H6  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

"  Billie !     O  Bil-lie !     Ring  that  bell." 

When  the  "  tub,"  the  first  through  train  between 
Harrisburg  and  Philadelphia,  was  put  on,  the 
general  sent  for  William  Wolf  and  Benjamin  Ken- 
nedy, the  engineers  who  were  to  take  the  run.  Both 
men  were  undersized.  The  general  thus  addressed 
them: 

"  Now,  boys,  you  are  going  to  run  through  to  Phil- 
adelphia over  a  strange  road.  When  you  leave  Co- 
lumbia you  will  have  a  steep  grade  to  Mountsville. 
See  that  you  have  a  good  supply  of  water  in  the 
boiler.  Also  instruct  your  firemen  to  have  in  a  good 
fire  for  the  Gap  grade. 

"  When  you  reach  Downingtown  instruct  your  fire- 
men to  have  a  good  fire  for  the  Byers  hill,  thirteen 
miles  to  Paoli.  Now,  you  two  little  engineers,  run 
along  to  your  twTo  little  engines  and  see  that  you 
make  time." 

The  choice  of  Thomas  A.  Scott  as  superintendent 
of  the  western  division  was  equally  felicitous.  The 
road  was  not  finished  to  Pittsburg  when  Scott  took 
up  his  duties  there.  Pittsburg  had  wanted  the  Bal- 
timore and  Ohio  Railroad,  and  the  city  had  waxed 
extremely  hostile  when  that  road's  charter  had  been 
annulled. 

But  Scott  handled  the  situation  with  such  consum- 
mate diplomacy  that  he  not  only  allayed  all  animosity 
but  actually  secured  one  million  dollars  for  the  Penn- 
sylvania and  many  valuable  franchises  and  privileges 
besides. 

Diplomacy  was  quite  as  much  needed  as  engineer- 
ing skill  in  the  first  stages  of  the  Pennsylvania  Rail- 
road. At  first  the  company  was  not  permitted  to 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  147 

run  its  trains  over  the  Philadelphia  and  Columbia 
Railroad.  When  it  was  granted  this  boon  it  could 
not  run  its  own  comfortable  cars,  because  the  tracks 
were  too  close  together,  and  the  roof  of  the  Elizabeth- 
town  tunnel  was  too  low. 

Individual  transporters  were  still  doing  business 
on  the  State  road,  and  their  operations  sadly  inter- 
fered with  the  development  of  the  transportation 
business  the  new  road  needed.  But  too  radical  or 
too  sudden  a  change  would  have  aroused  public  oppo- 
sition which  would  have  been  disastrous. 

The  difficulty  was  solved  by  the  purchase  of  the 
main  line  of  the  public  works  by  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad  Company  for  seven  million  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  possession  being  given  by  the  State 
August  1,  1857.  The  first  through  train  from  Phil- 
adelphia to  Pittsburg  without  transfer  of  passen- 
gers was  run  July  18,  1858.'  On  the  same  day  smok- 
ing-cars were  first  run  on  through  trains  and  Wood- 
ruff's sleeping-cars  on  the  night  trains. 

The  Pennsylvania  Railroad  was  now  fully 
launched.  Its  development  was  so  rapid  that  when 
the  Civil  War  began,  three  years  later,  it  was  in  a 
position  to  do  the  nation  a  great  service,  not  only  on 
its  own  rails,  but  also  by  supplying  skilled  and  dis- 
ciplined executive  and  operating  men  to  the  Govern- 
ment. 

December  1,  1871,  it  acquired  by  lease  for  nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  years  the  line  to  Jersey 
City,  and  six  years  later  had  a  double  track  in  opera- 
tion across  the  State  of  Pennsylvania.  It  had  long 
since  acquired  lines  to  Chicago,  St.  Louis,  and  the 
Central  West,  the  westward  extension  being  greatly 


148  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

accelerated  through  the  kind  assistance  of  Jay  Gould. 
It  cannot  be  truthfully  said,  though,  that  the  Penn- 
sylvania was  at  all  grateful  to  the  great  manipulator. 

The  Pennsylvania  had  been  encouraging  by  finan- 
cial assistance  and  otherwise  the  development  of  a 
chain  of  little  railroads  between  Pittsburg  and  Chi- 
cago, which  was  afterwards  welded  into  the  Pitts- 
burg,  Fort  Wayne  and  Chicago.  The  Pennsylvania, 
however,  was  satisfied  with  a  traffic  arrangement  and 
did  not  attempt  actual  possession. 

When  Gould,  after  establishing  himself  as  the  mas- 
ter of  the  Erie,  began  reaching  out  right  and  left  for 
every  railroad  property  that  was  lying  around  loose, 
other  managements  were  thrown  into  a  panic.  Be- 
fore the  Pennsylvania  could  recover  its  self-possession 
sufficiently  to  profit  by  the  object  lesson  Gould  had 
given,  that  astute  operator  had  secured  possession  of 
a  majority  of  the  stock  of  the  Pittsburg,  Fort  Wayne 
and  Chicago.  An  election  for  directors  was  to  be 
held  in  March,  1869,  when  he  would  have  established 
himself  securely  in  the  management  of  a  line  that  was 
absolutely  essential  to  the  continued  prosperity  of 
the  Pennsylvania,  had  not  that  road  established  a 
world's  legislative  record  by  securing  the  passage  of  a 
bill  by  both  houses  of  the  Pennsylvania  legislature 
and  its  signature  by  the  Governor  in  thirty-four  min- 
utes by  the  clock  on  February  3,  1869.  This  was  the 
famous  "  classification  bill,"  which  divided  the  board 
of  directors  of  the  Fort  Wayne  road  into  three  classes 
in  such  a  way  that  it  would  require  three  years  to 
elect  a  majority.  This  was  too  slow  for  Gould,  and 
he  withdrew.  After  such  a  narrow  escape  the  Penn- 
sylvania lost  no  time  in  securing  its  Western  exten- 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  RAILROAD  149 

sion  against  the  possibility  of  any  such  embarrassing 
complications  in  future. 

The  same  zeal  was  displayed  in  adopting  improve- 
ments and  in  extending  the  system  and  perfecting 
organization.  The  Pennsylvania  Railroad  was  the 
first  to  use  steel  rails,  in  1863;  the  first  to  use  Bes- 
semer steel  rails,  in  1865;  the  first  to  adopt  the  air- 
brake, in  1866;  the  track  tank,  in  1872,  and  the  signal 
block-system,  in  1873. 

When  the  semi-centennial  of  the  company  was  cel- 
ebrated in  Philadelphia,  April  13,  1896,  President 
Roberts  was  able  to  report  as  a  net  result  of  all  these 
endeavors  that  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  comprised 
138  separate  railroads,  representing  what  were  orig- 
inally 256  separate  corporations  with  9,000  miles  of 
main  line  having  an  aggregate  capital  of  $834,000,- 
000,  an  army  of  104,000  employees,  who  received 
$59,000,000  in  wages  annually,  and  that  the  com- 
pany, in  its  existence  of  fifty  years,  had  paid  $166,- 
000,000  in  dividends. 


CHAPTER  V 
GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM 

"HHICKETS,  please!" 

A  As  Master  of  Transportation  John  T. 
Clark  uttered  this  phrase  for  the  first  time  on  the  first 
train  on  the  first  railroad  in  the  Empire  State,  on  the 
morning  of  August  9,  1831,  the  spectators,  who  had 
been  poking  their  fingers  into  the  mechanism  of 
the  first  locomotive,  abandoned  that  diversion  and 
pressed  toward  the  speaker  to  witness  the  exciting 
operation  of  taking  up  tickets. 

That  first  collection  of  tickets  was  made  in  a 
distinctly  open-and-aboveboard,  public  style.  The 
train  was  standing  on  the  crest  of  a  hill  on  the  out- 
skirts of  Albany,  where  it  had  awaited  its  first  load 
of  passengers,  for  the  excellent  reason  that  it  did  not 
dare  to  venture  down  for  them. 

In  those  days  locomotive  builders  thought  they 
were  doing  pretty  well  to  evolve  a  machine  that  would 
move  on  level  ground,  without  attempting  to  climb 
hills.  So,  the  passengers  were  hauled  up  an  inclined 
plane  with  a  total  lift  of  one  hundred  and  eighty-five 
feet  above  the  valley  of  the  Hudson,  on  little  plat- 
form cars  drawn  by  a  cable  operated  by  a  twelve- 
horse-power  engine,  on  exactly  the  same  plan  that  is 
used  to-day  on  the  Otis  Elevating  Railway  in  the 
Catskills. 

The  first  passengers,  having  bought  their  tickets 

150 


ij    f-> 

!§  1 


fi     fe 


§  w 


&H      o 
H  M     « 

K5 

QQ 


5   H 

a 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     151 

at  the  hotels  the  night  before,  found  themselves  ob- 
jects of  the  admiration  and  envy  of  several  hundred 
persons  who  had  assembled  to  see  the  start  of  the  first 
train  on  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson  Railroad.  The 
only  contemporaneous  pictorial  representation  extant 
of  that  historic  first  train  was  cut  out  of  black  paper 
with  a  pair  of  scissors  by  the  famous  silhouette  artist, 
W.  H.  Brown. 

Because  Mr.  Brown  ran  short  of  paper,  his  sil- 
houette represents  only  the  engine — the  "  De  Witt 
Clinton  " — and  two  coaches,  but  in  reality  there  were 
five  coaches.  Those  first  cars  were  literally  coaches — 
stage  coaches  mounted  on  flanged  wheels  to  enable 
them  to  run  on  rails,  and  coupled  together  with  three 
long  links  between  each  two  coaches. 

The  foremost  two  were  reserved  for  the  more  dis- 
tinguished passengers,  while  the  others  were  provided 
with  planks  for  seats,  in  order  to  accommodate  as 
many  as  possible  of  those  who  wished  to  risk  their 
necks  in  experimenting  with  the  new  mode  of  travel. 
Although  the  coaches  were  packed  like  a  Broadway 
trolley-car  in  the  rush  hours,  several  hundred  who 
wished  to  make  the  trip  were  left  behind  for  lack 
of  accommodation. 

The  engine  had  but  one  occupant — Dave  Mat- 
thews, the  mechanic  who  had  built  the  machine  at  the 
West  Point  Foundry,  in  New  York  City,  from  plans 
drawn  by  John  B.  Jervis,  the  chief  engineer  of  the 
road,  and  had  brought  it  to  Albany  and  set  it  up, 
laboring  night  and  day  to  induce  the  thing  to  run. 
He  had  had  trouble  enough  in  doing  it,  too,  for  about 
everything  went  wrong  that  could  do  so. 

The  work  of  building  began  April  1,   1831.     It 


152  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

was  shipped  up  the  Hudson  on  June  25,  and  a  week 
later  Matthews  had  steam  up.  The  De  Witt  Clinton 
was  eleven  feet  six  inches  long,  weighed  6,758  pounds, 
had  two  cylinders  five  and  a  half  by  sixteen  inches, 
and  four  wooden  driving  wheels  with  iron  tires  four 
feet  six  inches  in  diameter. 

The  boiler  held  115  gallons  of  water  and  carried 
a  steam  pressure  of  fifty  pounds.  The  locomotive 
was  expected  to  develop  ten  horse-power  and  to  be 
able  to  haul  fifteen  tons  on  the  level  at  a  speed  of 
fifteen  miles  an  hour.  It  could  be  pushed  along 
readily  by  the  pressure  of  one  hand. 

When  Matthews  raised  steam  for  the  first  time  his 
troubles  began.  In  the  first  place,  the  chimney  was 
too  large,  and  the  ends  of  the  exhaust-pipes — they 
hadn't  got  around  to  nozzles  yet — were  placed  so  low 
down  that  they  couldn't  get  a  draft ;  so,  some  rebuild- 
ing had  to  be  done  at  once. 

When  the  Clinton  was  given  its  second  trial  the 
water  surged  over  into  the  cylinders,  threatening  to 
knock  them  to  pieces,  as  the  engine  bobbed  over  the 
rough  track.  A  dome  was  built,  and  trouble  number 
two  was  overcome. 

The  Clinton  was  planned  for  anthracite,  but  the 
coal  packed  and  wouldn't  burn  at  all  until  a  steam- 
blower  was  put  on,  and  then  the  grates  were  burned 
out,  so  they  had  to  fall  back  on  pitch-pine  as  the 
fuel  for  that  first  trip  with  passengers. 

Yet,  with  all  its  faults,  the  De  Witt  Clinton,  the 
third  locomotive  built  on  American  soil,  was  a  pretty 
good  machine,  for  it  developed  a  capacity  for  getting 
over  the  road  with  something  more  than  its  rated  load 
and  considerably  more  than  its  anticipated  speed  that 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     153 

formed  an  agreeable  contrast  to  the  performances  of 
locomotives  imported  from  England. 

Two  weeks  after  the  Clinton  was  placed  in  service, 
the  Mohawk  and  Hudson  Company  received  a  loco- 
motive called  the  "  Robert  Fulton,"  from  George  Ste- 
phenson,  the  famous  English  railroad  builder,  weigh- 
ing twelve  thousand  seven  hundred  and  forty-two 
pounds,  double  the  weight  of  the  Clinton.  Stephen- 
son  sent  a  letter  with  the  Fulton,  in  which  he  said: 

"  As  to  the  power  of  this  engine,  it  will  take  twenty  tons 
without  difficulty,  but  with  twelve  tons  it  will  be  much  better. 
The  small  inclination  of  1  in  225  will  affect  the  motion  of  the 
engine  very  little." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Fulton  quickly  demon- 
strated its  inability  to  pull  twelve  tons  or  any  other 
weight.  Being  assigned  to  pull  an  excursion  train 
to  take  the  Governor,  Lieutenant- Governor,  State 
Senators,  Congressmen,  members  of  the  New  York 
City  Council,  the  mayor  of  Albany,  and  other  distin- 
guished guests  over  the  road  one  day  in  the  latter 
part  of  August,  the  Fulton  broke  down,  and  the 
party  was  hauled  to  Schenectady  and  back  by  the 
Clinton,  with  three  coaches  and  in  seven  other  cars, 
the  latter  drawn  each  by  a  single  horse. 

Having  collected  the  tickets  on  this  first  run  of 
the  Clinton  by  walking  from  coach  to  coach  and 
climbing  up  on  the  steps,  Master  of  Transportation 
(long  since  degenerated  into  conductor)  Clark 
walked  forward  to  the  little  platform  car  which,  being 
laden  with  a  cask  of  water  and  a  few  sticks  of  wood, 
fulfilled  the  function  of  tender,  and  seating  himself, 
drew  from  a  pocket  a  tin  horn,  on  which  he  blew  a 
long  blast. 


154  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

At  this  signal  Matthews  opened  the  throttle  with  a 
suddenness  that  almost  caused  the  Clinton  to  jump 
off  the  rails.  To  tell  the  truth,  he  had  secret  mis- 
givings about  his  ability  to  start  the  load,  and  he 
meant  to  take  no  chances.  Besides,  there  was  no 
superintendent  to  lecture  him  on  the  importance  of 
handling  his  passengers  gently. 

The  result  of  those  tactics,  with  so  much  slack 
between  the  coaches,  can  be  imagined.  There  was  a 
violent  jerk  on  each  coach  in  succession,  which  almost 
snapped  the  passengers'  heads  off  as  boys  jerk  the 
heads  off  snakes  by  swinging  them  by  the  tails.  Many 
a  beaver  rolled  into  the  ditch  or  on  to  the  coach  floor, 
and  not  a  few  of  the  passengers  sprawled  after  them. 

But  as  the  Clinton  moved  on  at  an  increasing  speed 
the  jerks  gradually  tapered  off  into  a  steady  pull  as 
the  cheers  of  the  admiring  spectators  died  away  in 
the  distance.  By  the  time  the  passengers  dared  draw 
a  long  breath  and  look  about  them,  they  found  them- 
selves in  the  midst  of  new  tribulations. 

Matthews  had  tinkered  with  the  exhaust  and  the 
smoke-stack  until  he  had  produced  a  pretty  strong 
draft.  The  result  was  that  a  steady  stream  of  pitch- 
pine  cinders,  from  the  size  of  a  pin-head  to  that  of  a 
man's  thumb-nail,  poured  back  upon  the  passengers, 
and  particularly  those  on  the  roofs. 

Umbrellas  were  raised  as  a  protection,  but  they 
burned  up  like  so  much  tinder,  and  before  a  mile 
was  passed  the  ruins  of  the  last  umbrella  had  been 
pitched  overboard.  Meanwhile,  there  was  wild  con- 
fusion as  the  clothing  of  one  passenger  after  another 
burst  into  a  blaze,  which  his  neighbors  scrambled 
frantically  to  put  out. 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     155 

Five  miles  from  Albany  the  first  stop  was  made  to 
the  accompaniment  of  a  succession  of  violent  bumps 
and  jerks  like  those  which  marked  the  start.  Clark 
and  some  of  the  passengers  raided  a  fence  near  the 
track  to  procure  rails,  which  were  lashed  to  the 
coupling-chains  with  some  of  Matthews'  supply  of 
packing-yarn  to  stop  the  jerking  by  holding  the 
coaches  rigidly  apart. 

After  this  improved  coupling  had  been  devised  the 
inside  passengers  and  Master  of  Transportation 
Clark,  who  was  hugging  himself  with  joy  because  he 
was  so  near  the  engine  that  the  sparks  flew  over  him, 
were  better  able  to  enjoy  the  fun. 

The  flight  of  that  first  train  had  been  pretty  well 
advertised,  and  the  whole  countryside  had  turned  out 
to  see  it.  Farmers,  with  their  families  and  their 
wives'  relations,  had  driven  over  to  the  road  in  lum- 
ber-wagons, light  wagons,  and  all  sorts  of  convey- 
ances, and  being  naturally  desirous  of  obtaining  a 
good  view,  had  driven  up  as  close  to  the  track  as  they 
could  get.  The  track  for  nearly  the  entire  distance 
from  Albany  to  Schenectady  was  lined  with  farmers' 
rigs  like  the  infield  fence  at  a  race-course. 

When  the  engine  came  snorting  along,  the  horses, 
with  their  noses  close  enough  to  the  track  to  touch 
the  monster  as  it  came  along,  did  what  any  self- 
respecting  horses  might  be  expected  to  do  under  such 
circumstances — that  is,  they  reared,  snorted,  shied, 
and  ended  by  running  away.  The  result  was  a  grand 
stampede  all  along  the  line,  which  strewed  the  right- 
of-way  with  prostrate  forms  and  debris  until  it  looked 
like  a  battle-field  at  the  close  of  a  great  conflict. 

Schenectady,  the  western  terminus  of  the  road,  six- 


156  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

teen  miles  from  Albany,  was  reached  in  forty-six 
minutes.  The  train  stopped  at  the  top  of  a  hill,  the 
passengers  were  lowered  down  an  inclined  plane  with 
a  lift  of  one  hundred  and  fifteen  feet,  and  the  first 
railroad  trip  in  New  York  was  at  an  end.  There 
was  a  great  celebration,  with  music,  cannon  salutes, 
processions,  and  speech-making,  closing  with  a  dinner 
in  the  evening,  at  which  C.  C.  Cambreleng,  the  gen- 
eral manager  of  the  road,  with  the  title  of  agent,  pro- 
posed this  toast: 

"  The  Buffalo  Railroad:  May  we  soon  breakfast 
at  Utica,  dine  at  Rochester,  and  sup  with  our  friends 
on  Lake  Erie." 

His  wish  was  granted  at  an  early  date. 

The  passengers  on  that  first  train  returned  to  their 
homes  to  find  themselves  almost  as  great  heroes  as 
the  veterans  of  the  Revolution.  They  told  the  story 
of  their  wonderful  experiences  over  and  over,  and 
their  stories  didn't  shrink  a  bit  from  frequent  reitera- 
tion, either.  Soon  the  railroad  fever  was  spreading 
through  the  State  like  measles  in  a  boarding-school. 

Sixty  days  after  the  De  Witt  Clinton's  first  trip  a 
single  issue  of  the  Albany  Argus  contained  notices 
of  intention  to  file  applications  for  charters  for  rail- 
road companies  with  an  aggregate  capital  of  twenty- 
two  million  dollars.  Matters  came  to  such  a  pass 
that  when  a  man  went  away  from  home  he  was 
ashamed  to  register  from  his  own  town  unless  it  had 
a  railroad  enterprise  mapped  out. 

The  legislature  which  met  in  the  January  succeed- 
ing the  opening  of  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson  Rail- 
road was  confronted  with  no  fewer  than  forty-nine 
applications  for  railroad  charters. 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     157 

At  the  session  of  1836  fifty-eight  railroad  charters 
were  granted  or  renewed.  The  Assemblyman  who 
could  not  take  home  at  least  one  railroad  charter 
from  Albany  need  expect  no  further  political  favors 
from  his  outraged  constituents.  Up  to  1849  one 
hundred  and  fifty-one  separate  railroads  had  been 
chartered  in  New  York.  Fortunately,  but  thirty  of 
these  lines  were  ever  built.  In  that  year  the  legisla- 
ture, in  self-defense,  delegated  its  chartering  powers 
to  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  was  thus  enabled  to 
devote  some  time  to  other  public  business. 

As  early  as  1840  the  State  had  dipped  into  its 
treasury  to  the  extent  of  $3,478,000  to  help  poor  but 
worthy  railroads.  No  fewer  than  fifty  railroad  com- 
panies have  received  cash  gifts  from  the  people  of 
New  York  through  the  State  and  local  governments. 
Of  these,  ten  companies  received  cash  aid  direct  from 
the  State  treasury  aggregating  $10,060,591,  while 
two  hundred  and  ninety-four  cities,  towns,  and  vil- 
lages contributed  $29,978,905  more,  making  a  grand 
total  of  $40,039,496  as  a  free  gift  toward  the  total 
value  of  the  $500,000,000  worth  of  railroad  property 
in  the  State. 

At  all  events  the  popular  attitude  toward  railroads 
now  afforded  an  interesting  contrast  to  the  apathy 
with  which  the  proposal  to  build  the  Mohawk  and 
Hudson,  the  first  railroad  in  New  York,  was  re- 
ceived. The  charter  for  this  road  was  granted  Feb- 
ruary 28,  1826,  upon  the  application  of  Stephen  Van 
Rensselaer,  of  Albany,  and  George  W.  Feather- 
stonhaugh,  of  Duanesburgh.  There  was  not  a  rail- 
road in  the  country  then;  but  as  the  petitioners  asked 
no  favors  from  the  State,  but  professed  their  will- 


158  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

ingness  to  pay  the  cost  of  the  experiment  themselves, 
the  legislature  saw  no  harm  in  granting  the  desired 
permission.  Stock  in  the  enterprise  proving  unsala- 
ble, the  legislature  was  asked  two  years  later  to  mod- 
ify some  of  the  conditions  on  which  the  charter  was 
granted. 

The  messages  of  Governor  Clinton  in  1827  and 
1828,  and  of  Governor  Van  Buren  in  1829  and  1830, 
had  not  a  word  to  say  on  the  subject  of  railroads. 
Governor  Throop  in  1831  referred  in  his  message  to 
the  opening  of  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  Rail- 
road in  England,  and  hazarded  the  opinion  that  a 
railroad  across  the  State  might  be  found  useful  in 
winter  when  the  canal  was  frozen  up. 

Early  in  September,  1831,  a  convention  at  Buf- 
falo addressed  a  circular  to  the  State  at  large  urging 
that  immediate  steps  be  taken  for  the  construction  of 
a  railroad  from  Lake  Erie  to  the  Hudson  River.  It 
was  argued  that  such  a  road,  instead  of  injuring  the 
Erie  Canal,  would  benefit  it  by  relieving  it  of  passen- 
ger and  light  freight  traffic,  thus  leaving  it  free  to 
handle  exclusively  the  heavy  freight  to  which  it  was 
particularly  adapted.  Buffalo,  Rochester,  and  Syr- 
acuse united  in  a  great  convention  at  the  latter  place 
October  12,  1831,  in  furtherance  of  the  project.  At 
this  great  mass-meeting  a  committee  was  appointed 
to  apply  for  a  charter  for  a  company  with  a  capital 
of  five  million  dollars  to  build  the  road.  Four  rail- 
road charters  were  granted  by  the  legislature  that 
winter. 

Despite  the  desire  for  a  through  railroad  from 
Albany  to  Buffalo,  experienced  most  keenly  by  the 
towns  which  had  sprung  up  along  the  Erie  Canal,  its 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     159 

construction  was  not  begun  as  a  single  undertaking, 
but  in  a  desultory  way  as  an  aggregation  of  discon- 
nected fragments,  the  first  link  being  the  Mohawk 
and  Hudson  from  Albany,  sixteen  miles  to  Schenec- 
tady.  The  next  link  bridged  the  gap  of  seventy- 
eight  miles  from  Schenectady  to  Utica. 

As  public  opinion  grew  enlightened  through  dis- 
cussion, people  became  read}^,  and  even  eager,  to  back 
their  schemes  with  their  own  money.  The  Syracuse 
and  Utica  Railroad  is  a  striking  instance  in  this  con- 
nection. 

The  company  was  chartered  May  11,  1836,  to  build 
fifty-three  miles  of  road  to  connect  the  towns  of  Syr- 
acuse and  Utica.  The  capital  stock  was  eight  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars.  Within  two  weeks  after  the 
books  were  opened  subscriptions  were  recorded  total- 
ing two  million  five  hundred  thousand  dollars. 

This  Syracuse  and  Utica  Railroad  was  remarkable 
in  many  ways.  Interesting  features  cropped  up  from 
the  moment  the  scheme  was  broached.  While  every 
one  concerned  wanted  the  road,  they  could  not  agree 
on  the  route  it  should  take.  One  faction  favored  a 
direct  route  south  of  the  Erie  Canal;  another  was 
determined  to  have  it  built  on  a  northern  route,  which 
was  much  longer.  Utica  fought  desperately  for  the 
longer  route  because  that  would  necessitate  a  trans- 
fer through  the  town  by  omnibus  and  wagon  from 
the  proposed  eastern  connection,  and  Utica  wanted 
things  arranged  so  passengers  would  have  to  stay 
over  night  at  its  hotels.  A  formidable  lobby  de- 
scended on  Albany.  The  legislature  neatly  side- 
stepped embarrassing  alliances  by  directing  that  the 
road  should  be  built  "  by  the  most  available  route." 


160  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

The  lucky  ones  who  obtained  stock  paid  in  their 
money  promptly,  surveys  were  made  at  once,  and  the 
line  was  completed  and  opened  for  traffic  fourteen 
months  after  the  contracts  were  let,  at  a  cost  of  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars  less  than  the  capital. 

The  pile  system  of  construction  invented  by  E.  P. 
Williams,  of  Utica,  was  used.  This  was  supposed 
to  be  a  great  improvement  on  the  stone  blocks  used 
in  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson.  Piles  first  soaked  in 
salt  to  prevent  rotting  were  driven  to  a  depth  of  from 
twenty-five  to  thirty  feet  by  splicing  them. 

Most  of  the  way  was  through  marshy  ground  and 
heavy  timber.  On  top  of  the  piles  longitudinal 
stringers  were  laid,  tied  together  at  intervals  of 
twenty  feet  by  cross-pieces.  On  top  of  the  stringers 
were  laid  "  ribbon  pieces." 

According  to  the  contract,  these  ribbon  pieces  were 
to  be  of  "  white  oak,  free  from  wain,  sap,  and  knots, 
one  and  one-half  by  three  inches,  and  ten  to  fifteen 
feet  long."  On  top  of  these  ribbon  pieces  the  iron 
strap-rail  was  spiked. 

The  first  train  from  Utica  arrived  at  Rome  on 
Thursday,  June  27,  1839,  when  the  editor  of  the 
Rome  Sentinel  boasted  that  he  had  achieved  the  re- 
markable feat  of  shaking  hands  in  the  streets  of  his 
own  town  with  men  who  had  left  Utica  forty-five 
minutes  before. 

In  the  afternoon  the  train  continued  its  journey  to 
Syracuse.  There  was  great  excitement — cheering 
multitudes,  booming  cannon,  speech-making,  and 
dining. 

On  the  same  principle  that  the  inventor  of  a  new 
breakfast  food  sends  out  demonstrators  to  distribute 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     161 

free  samples  of  his  product,  the  management  of  the 
Syracuse  and  Utica  Railroad  gave  free  sample  rides 
for  the  rest  of  the  week  to  all  who  could  find  room  to 
hang  on  to  its  trains. 

Business  was  pretty  generally  suspended  along  the 
road  for  that  week  while  the  population  satisfied  its 
craving  for  railroad  travel.  The  scheme  worked  like 
a  charm;  for  when  the  collection  of  fares  began  on 
Wednesday,  July  3,  the  receipts  averaged  six  hun- 
dred dollars  a  day  for  many  weeks  thereafter.  Con- 
sidering that  the  country  was  new,  and  that  it  wasn't 
much  of  a  railroad,  after  all,  this  was  doing  pretty 
well. 

On  the  Fourth  of  July  an  excursion  was  run  over 
the  road  that  they  are  still  talking  about  in  that  part 
of  the  State.  All  the  available  rolling-stock,  which 
wasn't  a  great  deal,  was  crowded  to  suffocation  by 
an  ecstatic  crowd  which  went  into  raptures  over  the 
swift  motion  through  the  great  forests,  which  at  that 
time  of  year  were  at  their  best.  The  road  being  ele- 
vated on  piles,  the  excursionists  were  able  to  fancy 
they  were  sailing  through  the  air. 

Henry  Clay  came  up  from  his  Kentucky  home  for 
a  ride  on  the  wonderful  pile  railroad.  He  praised  it 
until  the  people  were  filled  with  delight.  Even  Pres- 
ident Van  Buren  heard  so  much  about  it  that  he  had 
to  come  up  and  take  a  ride,  spending  the  night  of 
September  10,  1839,  at  Utica. 

No  wonder  that  the  stock  quickly  rose  to  one  hun- 
dred and  ten,  or  that  the  company  was  able  to  pay 
dividends  of  five  dollars  a  share  every  six  months. 

The  next  link  westward  in  the  Buffalo  Railroad 
which  Mr.  Cambreleng  toasted  at  that  memorable 


162  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

dinner  of  August  9,  1831,  the  Auburn  and  Syracuse 
Railroad,  was  organized  some  seventeen  months  be- 
fore the  Syracuse  and  Utica,  but  it  did  not  have  the 
smooth  and  pleasant  career  of  the  latter. 

In  fact,  it  encountered  greater  difficulties  than  any 
other  of  the  railroads  in  the  Buffalo  chain.  Surveys 
were  begun  in  April,  1835,  and  construction  in  the 
following  December,  but  the  financial  disturbances 
of  1836  and  1837,  and  the  great  advance  in  the  price 
of  provisions,  material,  and  labor,  came  pretty  near 
wrecking  the  company. 

However,  the  road  was  finished,  and,  with  wooden 
rails  and  horses  for  motive  power,  was  opened  Jan- 
uary 8,  1838.  The  company  raised  money  enough  to 
buy  a  locomotive,  the  "  Syracuse,"  with  which  H. 
Perry,  the  master  mechanic,  took  the  officers  over  the 
road  June  4,  1839.  Meanwhile,  iron  strap-rails  had 
replaced  the  wooden  ones. 

The  Auburn  and  Syracuse  Railroad  enjoyed  the 
unique  distinction  of  having  been  conceded  by  the 
legislature  the  privilege  of  carrying  freight.  All  the 
other  early  railroads  were  restricted  to  the  carrying 
of  passengers  and  their  baggage  and  the  mails.  One 
of  the  first  things  to  do,  therefore,  was  to  organize  the 
freight  business.  W.  G.  Fargo,  the  great  express 
man,  began  life  by  doing  what  he  could  to  establish 
this  important  branch  of  the  Auburn  and  Syracuse 
Railroad's  business  as  freight  agent  in  the  old  Gen- 
esee  Street  depot  at  Auburn. 

The  business  of  freighting  by  wagon  was  pretty 
well  established  by  this  time,  and  it  promised  to  be 
none  too  easy  a  task  to  make  head  against  this  wagon 
competition  at  the  outset. 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     163 

But  the  company  got  in  a  master  stroke  of  diplo- 
macy. Uncle  Nat  Williams,  a  well-known  character, 
on  the  shady  side  of  fifty,  with  a  cheery  voice,  a  beam- 
ing face  framed  in  a  fringe  of  white  whiskers,  and  a 
pleasant  word  for  everybody,  had  the  cream  of  the 
freighting  business  out  of  Auburn.  To  Uncle  Nat 
the  scheming  railroad  company  proposed  that  if  he 
would  withdraw  his  teams  from  the  freighting  busi- 
ness he  should  be  made  freight  conductor. 

Uncle  Nat  yielded  to  this  temptation,  and  thus 
became  the  first  freight  conductor  in  the  State  of  New 
York.  His  cheery  voice  waked  the  echoes  along  the 
Auburn  and  Syracuse  road,  for  Uncle  Nat  continued 
to  give  signals  with  his  lungs  just  as  he  had  done 
when  he  was  handling  horses  instead  of  railroad  men, 
until  September  5,  1841,  when  he  retired  to  enjoy 
the  rest  his  busy  life  had  earned. 

The  trains  of  which  Uncle  Nat  and  his  fellow  con- 
ductors had  charge  were  not  at  all  imposing.  The 
box  cars  were  not  much  bigger  than  a  good-sized 
packing-case.  They  had  four  wheels,  and  thirty 
barrels  of  flour  loaded  one  to  the  limit  of  its  capacity. 

Switching  was  done  with  horses.  When  the  cars 
were  loaded  they  would  be  hauled  down  to  the  main 
line,  where  they  were  coupled  to  the  locomotive. 
Fourteen  loads  made  a  full  train. 

Passenger  cars  were  more  like  instruments  of  tor- 
ture than  vehicles  for  travel.  Like  the  freight  cars, 
they  had  four  wheels.  They  were  divided  into  three 
compartments,  like  European  cars  of  to-day,  only 
they  were  not  so  large. 

Each  compartment  would  seat  eight  persons,  pro- 
vided care  was  exercised  not  to  select  too  large  per- 


164  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

sons,  four  on  each  seat,  face  to  face.  There  was  no 
elbow-room,  and  no  room  to  stand  up  straight. 

Neither  were  there  any  stoves  to  heat  the  cars  in 
winter.  The  conductor  got  around  to  collect  fares 
by  walking  from  one  side  door  to  another  along  a 
ledge  outside  the  car  barely  four  inches  wide,  holding 
to  a  hand-rail  near  the  top. 

This  was  anything  but  a  cheerful  task  in  stormy  or 
windy  weather.  Conductor  George  Williamson  lost 
his  hold  one  cold,  snowy  night  near  Marcellus,  and 
fell  to  a  snow-drift  beside  the  track,  from  which  he 
rolled  under  the  wheels  and  was  killed. 

Stevenson  &  Co.,  stage  builders,  of  New  York 
City,  built  an  eight- wheeled  passenger  car  in  1839 
which  was  tried  on  the  Auburn  and  Syracuse  road. 
It  was  the  only  eight-wheeled  passenger  coach  run  on 
any  of  the  railroads  between  Albany  and  Auburn  for 
several  years. 

It  was  so  much  larger  than  the  little  bandboxes  for 
which  the  road  had  been  built  that  it  would  barely 
clear  obstructions.  Soon  after  this  car  was  put  into 
service  Conductor  Samuel  Wildrick  was  crushed  to 
death  between  it  and  the  depot  doorway  at  Syracuse 
as  his  train  was  pulling  out  in  the  evening  for 
Auburn. 

The  space  between  car  and  doorway  was  less  than 
four  inches.  Wildrick  was  not  missed  until  the  train 
had  run  three  miles.  It  was  backed  up,  and  the  body 
was  found  lying  where  it  had  fallen. 

For  a  long  time  the  motive  power  of  the  Auburn 
and  Syracuse  consisted  of  three  locomotives,  all  of 
Rogers  make,  weighing  ten  and  a  half  tons  each. 
They  had  a  single  pair  of  drivers,  and  it  kept  them 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     165 

busy  to  get  over  the  road  with  fourteen  of  the  little 
cars. 

At  first  the  company  tried  to  run  the  locomotives 
on  wooden  ribbon  pieces,  but  they  would  not  stay  on 
the  track,  so  it  was  necessary  to  lay  "  snakeheads." 
These  snakeheads,  or  strap-rails,  were  in  universal  use 
for  eight  years  in  New  York,  up  to  1847. 

They  were  nothing  in  the  world  but  flat  bar  iron 
two  and  one-half  inches  wide  and  three-quarters  of 
an  inch  thick,  laid  on  six-by-six  pine  string-pieces  and 
held  in  place  by  spikes  eighteen  inches  apart.  The 
weight  of  the  train  would  cause  these  iron  straps  to 
curl  up  like  a  hoop  with  force  sufficient  to  break  or 
pull  out  the  spikes  near  the  ends,  which  would  be  left 
sticking  up  from  the  wooden  base  all  the  way  from  a 
few  inches  to  two  feet. 

These  projecting  ends  had  a  playful  habit  of  pok- 
ing themselves  up  through  the  cab  of  an  engine  or 
the  floor  of  a  car  when  a  train  struck  them  from  the 
wrong  direction.  If  an  engineman  or  a  passenger 
happened  to  be  in  the  way  he  was  pretty  likely  to  be 
hurt. 

R.  P.  Witherspoon,  a  young  lawyer  of  Syracuse, 
had  occasion  to  go  to  Auburn  one  December  evening 
in  1840.  The  day  being  cold  and  blustery,  his  wife 
insisted  on  turning  up  his  overcoat  collar  with  her 
own  hands  and  wrapping  so  many  thicknesses  of 
woolen  comforter  around  his  neck  that  he  couldn't 
bend  his  head  to  kiss  her  good-by,  but  was  obliged  to 
have  her  stand  on  a  chair  to  receive  the  salute. 

He  grumbled  about  being  muffled  up  like  a  hired 
man,  but  his  wife  insisted  that  he  would  surely  catch 
his  death  of  cold  if  he  didn't  submit.  Being  newly 


166  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

married,  he  agreed  to  wear  the  muffler  as  his  wife  had 
arranged  it. 

Mr.  Witherspoon  entered  the  car  next  the  engine, 
and  selected  the  right-hand  end  seat  facing  forward, 
in  the  middle  compartment.  Two  strangers  occupied 
the  same  seat,  while  two  friends  sat  opposite.  After 
riding  a  few  miles,  Mr.  Witherspoon  changed  to  the 
opposite  seat,  in  order  to  converse  more  comfortably 
with  his  friends. 

He  had  scarcely  made  the  change  when  there  was 
a  crash.  Turning  his  head  quickly,  Mr.  Wither- 
spoon had  barely  time  to  get  a  glimpse  of  a  snake- 
head  pushing  up  through  the  seat  he  had  just  vacated 
when  it  curled  over,  and  catching  him  in  the  throat, 
pushed  him  violently  back  through  the  thin  wooden 
partition. 

He  was  stunned  for  an  instant.  When  he  recov- 
ered his  wits  he  found  himself  lying  with  head  and 
shoulders  through  the  broken  partition,  with  both 
hands  clutching  the  snakehead,  the  end  of  which 
rested  against  the  numerous  folds  of  coat  collar  and 
comforter  under  his  chin.  That  comforter  had  saved 
his  life.  The  train  was  stopped  until  the  snakehead 
could  be  spiked  back  in  its  place. 

Emigrant  traffic,  which  was  very  heavy  in  the  early 
days  of  the  Auburn  and  Syracuse,  promptly  forsook 
the  canal  as  soon  as  there  were  railroads  to  travel 
upon;  for,  crude  as  those  pioneer  roads  were,  they 
were  a  decided  improvement  on  canal  boats.  This 
emigrant  traffic,  which  included  household  goods  and 
farming  implements,  together  with  its  regular  freight 
traffic,  and  heavy  passenger  business  the  road  was 
poorly  equipped  to  handle.  New  engines  had  to  be 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     167 

obtained.  Two  were  ordered  of  Dennis,  Wood  & 
Russell,  of  Auburn.  They  were  built  under  the 
direction  of  William  S.  Hudson,  as  superintendent, 
who  afterward  became  noted  as  a  locomotive  builder. 

These  engines  were  the  first  built  in  America  to 
work  steam  expansively.  One  of  them,  the  "  Wyo- 
ming," was  considered  the  best  engine  of  its  capacity 
ever  on  the  road. 

The  first  engine  with  six-foot  drivers  to  run  west 
of  the  Hudson  was  built  for  the  Auburn  and  Syra- 
cuse in  1848  by  Rogers.  It  was  named  the  "  How," 
after  Thomas  Y.  How,  treasurer  of  the  road.  This 
engine  was  a  hoodoo  from  the  beginning  of  its  career. 
It  was  always  getting  off  the  rails  or  into  some  other 
sort  of  difficulty. 

Its  career  terminated  about  a  year  after  it  began. 
William  Delano,  engineer,  with  Thomas  Hooper, 
fireman,  left  Syracuse  with  four  coaches  and  a  bag- 
gage car  one  day.  There  were  two  visitors  in  the 
cab,  who  wanted  to  try  the  novelty  of  a  ride  on  an 
engine — C.  C.  Dennis,  one  of  the  directors  of  the 
road,  and  Howard  Delano,  brother  of  the  engineer. 

While  running  fifty  miles  an  hour  the  engine  left 
the  rails  one  mile  west  of  Sennett.  The  engineer  and 
fireman  were  instantly  killed,  Dennis  received  severe 
injuries  which  disfigured  him  for  life,  while  Howard 
Delano,  by  some  strange  freak  of  fate,  was  only 
slightly  hurt.  The  hoodoo  engine  was  so  utterly  de- 
molished that  no  attempt  was  made  to  rebuild  it. 

A  telegraph  office  was  opened  at  Auburn  in  May, 
1846.  Soon  afterward  an  attempt  was  made  to  use 
it  in  sending  train  orders,  with  disastrous  results. 

The  passenger  train  due  in  Auburn  from  Roch- 


168  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

ester  at  4  A.M.  had  not  arrived  at  5:30,  and  as  the 
engine  which  was  to  leave  Auburn  had  to  be  in  Syra- 
cuse in  order  to  leave  there  with  a  passenger  train 
at  7  A.M.,  it  was  ordered  to  leave  without  waiting  for 
the  Rochester  train. 

Meanwhile  the  Rochester  train  got  in  and  was 
ordered  to  run  to  Syracuse,  where  the  west-bound 
train  was  to  be  held  by  telegraph.  Unfortunately, 
the  operator  at  Syracuse  must  have  had  an  extra  good 
breakfast  that  morning.  At  any  rate,  he  didn't  get 
to  his  office  until  the  west-bound  train  had  left. 

A  fine  large  heap  of  kindling-wood  marked  the 
spot  near  Fairmount  where  the  trains  attempted  to 
pass  on  a  curve.  Fortunately,  no  one  was  seriously 
hurt. 

Piece  by  piece  the  longed-for  Buffalo  road  was 
growing.  The  seventy-eight  miles  from  Schenectady 
to  Utica  were  finished  in  1836;  the  thirty-three  miles 
from  Rochester  to  Batavia  were  opened  in  1837,  and 
extended  twelve  miles  farther,  to  Attica,  in  1842;  the 
seventy-eight  miles  from  Auburn  to  Rochester  were 
opened  in  1841,  and  the  thirty-one  miles  from  Attica 
to  Buffalo  in  December,  1842. 

By  the  beginning  of  1843  there  was  a  rail  route 
by  which  it  was  possible  to  travel  from  Albany  to 
Buffalo  in  thirty  hours  without  changing  cars  more 
than  six  times. 

There  were  no  through  tickets  and  no  baggage 
checks.  A  ride  over  each  of  the  seven  independent 
roads  was  a  complete  transaction  in  itself.  When  the 
passenger  got  to  the  end  of  the  road  he  hunted  up  his 
baggage,  if  he  had  any,  had  it  chalked  to  the  next 
stopping  place,  bargained  with  expressmen  and  hack- 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     169 

men  for  transfer  to  the  station  of  the  next  road  in 
line,  bought  a  new  ticket,  and  took  a  fresh  start. 

Under  such  circumstances  a  pass  over  these  diminu- 
tive railroads  would  hardly  seem  to  be  worth  the 
trouble  required  to  get  it.  Yet  applicants  for  these 
favors  were  so  persistent,  and  they  had  so  serious  an 
effect  upon  the  revenues  of  the  road,  that  early  in 
1850  the  representatives  of  the  roads  between  Albany 
and  Buffalo  were  compelled  to  appoint  a  committee 
to  find  some  means  to  abate  the  nuisance.  The  com- 
mittee recommended  that  after  July  1,  1850,  the 
granting  of  passes  should  cease,  and  that  employees 
should  be  especially  charged  not  to  ask  or  receive  free 
passage  over  any  other  roads. 

By  1850  the  science  of  railroading  had  progressed 
so  far  that  the  traveler  could  purchase  through  tick- 
ets between  Albany  and  Buffalo  for  $9.75,  though  he 
could  not  obtain  at  any  price  any  information  upon 
which  he  could  rely  about  the  movement  of  trains. 
Theoretically  the  express  trains  covered  the  distance 
between  Albany  and  Buffalo  in  fourteen  hours,  as  the 
"  ticket  master,"  the  predecessor  of  the  modern 
ticket  agent,  blandly  assured  all  inquirers,  and  there 
were  five  trains  a  day  each  way.  How  faithfully 
these  promises  were  fulfilled  may  be  gathered  from  the 
narrative  of  a  traveler  who  left  Albany  at  7  o'clock 
on  a  Saturday  evening  in  May,  1850,  with  the  assur- 
ance that  he  would  be  taken  through  to  Buffalo  in 
fourteen  hours. 

Arriving  at  Utica  at  11:30  P.M.,  the  train  was 
switched  onto  a  side  track  and  left  there.  The  trav- 
eler with  his  fellow  passengers  sat  in  the  stuffy  little 
coaches,  in  which  a  candle  at  each  end  struggled  to 


170  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

make  darkness  visible,  without  being  able  to  learn 
when  they  could  proceed  or  whether  they  ever  would 
be  taken  any  further.  Then,  at  2  A.M.  a  locomotive 
bumped  down  against  their  train,  and  after  a  ride  of 
three  hours  they  arrived  at  Syracuse  at  5  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  Here  the  passengers  were  left 
without  any  intimation  of  what  Fate  and  the  rail- 
road company  had  in  store  for  them.  All  attempts 
to  obtain  information  were  fruitless.  They  could 
only  hover  about  the  cheerless  boxes  of  cars  and  wait 
for  twelve  hours  and  a  half.  Then,  at  5:30  P.M. 
they  resumed  their  journey  to  Rochester,  where  they 
arrived  at  midnight,  only  to  wait  another  six  hours 
for  an  engine  to  take  them  to  Buffalo,  where  they 
arrived  completely  exhausted  after  a  journey  of  two 
hundred  and  ninety  miles,  which  had  lasted  thirty- 
eight  hours  and  a  half. 

Nor  were  maddening  delays  the  only  unpleasant 
feature  of  a  railroad  journey  in  those  early  days.  In 
1845  the  Railroad  Journal  complimented  the  Har- 
lem Railroad  on  its  enterprise  in  introducing  cars 
"  so  high  that  one  can  stand  erect  when  he  cannot 
find  a  seat."  For  years  after  this  step  in  advance 
it  was  all  a  tall  man  could  do  to  stand  erect  in  the 
average  passenger  car.  The  clerestory  did  not  come 
into  general  use  until  after  the  Civil  War.  The 
windows  were  very  small  and  the  sashes  were  so 
loose  that  they  rattled  a  continuous  obligate  to  the 
creaking  and  groaning  of  the  flimsy  frame.  In  fact, 
the  cars  were  nicknamed  "  rattlers,"  "  hyenas,"  and 
"  cribs."  As  travel  was  too  heavy  for  the  facilities 
available  the  cars  were  generally  overcrowded  and 
the  air  in  the  tiny  boxes  was  foul  almost  beyond  en- 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     171 

durance.  Heat  was  furnished  by  a  stove  at  each 
end.  Passengers  near  the  stoves  were  almost 
roasted  alive,  while  those  in  the  middle  of  the  car 
shivered  with  cold. 

The  sleeping  cars,  though,  were  the  uttermost  ex- 
treme of  atrocity.  Desultory  attempts  were  made  to 
introduce  sleeping  cars  from  the  time  the  first  ones 
were  tried  on  the  Cumberland  Valley  in  Pennsylva- 
nia in  1836.  By  1859  several  lines,  including  those 
in  central  New  York,  were  using  so-called  sleeping 
cars.  They  were  simply  "  rattlers,"  crude  and  rough 
as  they  were,  fitted  up  with  three  tiers  of  shelves. 
With  three  bunks  to  the  section  in  these  low  cars 
the  passenger  had  to  spread  himself  out  pretty  thin 
to  get  into  his  berth  at  all.  However,  there  was  no 
superfluous  bedding  to  take  up  space.  The  only 
things  in  that  line  furnished  by  the  railroad  company 
were  pillows  and  mattresses,  which  were  piled  up  in 
one  corner  and  dragged  by  the  passengers  to  the 
scene  of  torture  when  required. 

Yet  one  of  these  wheeled  torture  chambers  was 
directly  responsible  for  the  luxurious  limited  trains 
of  the  twentieth  century.  One  night  in  1859  a  young 
man  who  had  just  cleared  twenty  thousand  dollars 
raising  houses  to  grade  in  Chicago  indulged  in  the 
luxury  of  a  berth  in  a  sleeping  car  from  Buffalo  to 
his  old  home  at  Westport.  After  a  few  hours  of 
agony  he  fled  from  his  berth  to  a  day  coach  to  rub 
his  aching  bones  and  think  of  cutting  remarks  he 
would  have  made  to  the  builder  of  that  sleeping  car 
if  he  had  had  the  chance.  But  George  M.  Pullman 
soon  forgot  his  grievance  in  more  practical  musings 
on  the  curious  fact  that  no  one  had  yet  devised  a  sleep- 


172  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

ing  car  in  which  people  could  sleep,  which  led  him  to 
wonder  why  he  could  not  do  it  himself. 

To  a  man  with  youth,  health,  energy,  ambition,  and 
twenty  thousand  dollars,  all  things  are  possible. 
Pullman  returned  to  Chicago,  and  with  Benjamin 
Field,  of  New  York,  arranged  to  operate  sleeping 
cars  on  the  Chicago  and  Alton  and  the  Galena  and 
Chicago  Union  railroads.  But  for  this  one  time  in 
his  career  Pullman  did  a  thing  first  and  thought  about 
it  afterward.  The  experiments  were  so  unsatisfac- 
tory that  he  gave  them  up  and  went  to  Colorado,  at- 
tracted by  the  Pike's  Peak  gold  excitement.  He 
found  no  gold,  but  he  found  an  opportunity  to  think 
over  the  sleeping  car  idea  more  fully.  He  reached  the 
conclusion  that  if  he  were  to  build  a  car  comfortable 
and  complete  in  accommodations,  handsome  and 
suitable  for  occupancy  both  by  night  and  by  day, 
night  travel  would  become  popular  and  the  business 
would  grow  to  vast  proportions.  This  time  he  for- 
mulated his  plans  fully  before  he  made  a  move. 

Once  his  mind  was  made  up,  Pullman  returned  to 
Chicago,  and  again  made  an  arrangement  with  the 
Chicago  and  Alton  to  run  sleeping  cars.  The  Chi- 
cago and  Alton  was  then  in  desperate  straits.  The 
sheriff  made  frequent  calls  to  attach  the  receipts,  and 
the  management  was  ready  to  clutch  at  any  straw  or 
enter  into  any  agreement  that  held  out  any  hope  of 
relief,  however  shadowy.  The  management  even' 
gave  Pullman  the  use  of  a  shed  in  which  to  build  his 
first  sleeping  car. 

Pullman's  first  sleeping  car  worried  other  people 
more  than  it  did  himself  while  it  was  building.  His 
friends  gave  proof  of  their  fidelity  by  protesting  long 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     173 

and  earnestly  against  his  folly.  Railroad  men  rea- 
soned with  him  and  explained  the  many  things  which 
made  it  impossible  for  him  to  succeed  in  his  venture. 
Even  the  workmen  who  were  hired  to  build  the  car 
felt  sorry  for  their  employer's  inexperience  and  lack 
of  business  judgment  and  ignorance  of  cabinet-mak- 
ing and  all  the  other  handicrafts  called  into  requisi- 
tion. Whenever  he  wanted  a  certain  thing  done  in 
a  certain  way,  there  were  always  innumerable  reasons 
why  it  couldn't  be  done  in  that  particular  way  or  any 
other  way. 

But  Pullman  obstinately  insisted  on  having  his 
own  way,  in  spite  of  well-meaning  friends  and  rail- 
road men  who  understood  the  transportation  business 
down  to  the  ground,  kindly  disposed  workmen  who 
knew  better  than  he  did  himself  what  he  wanted,  and 
the  intelligent  public  that  always  knows  everything. 
As  a  crowning  act  of  folly,  he  employed  a  famous 
artist,  who  had  just  finished  decorating  Samuel  J. 
Tilden's  house,  to  come  to  Chicago  and  decorate  his 
first  car.  At  last,  after  several  months  of  toil,  the 
first  Pullman  palace  sleeping  car  was  finished. 
When  it  was  drawn  out  on  a  side  track  for  inspection, 
the  results  of  the  builder's  obstinacy  were  strikingly 
apparent. 

The  "  Pioneer,"  as  it  had  been  named,  was  a  foot 
wider  and  two  and  a  half  feet  higher  than  any  car 
that  had  ever  been  built.  One  of  Pullman's  railroad 
friends  pointed  out  that  the  car  could  not  be  run  on 
any  railroad  then  in  existence  because  it  was  so  big 
that  it  would  not  clear  the  station  platforms  and 
bridges. 

"  I  know  it,"  said  Pullman.     "  I  suppose  you'll 


174  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

have  to  cut  down  the  platforms  and  rebuild  the 
bridges." 

And  that  was  precisely  what  happened.  Since 
Pullman  would  not  build  his  cars  to  fit  the  railroads, 
the  railroads  had  to  be  built  to  fit  Pullman's  cars. 
Next  they  had  to  improve  all  their  passenger  equip- 
ment to  fit  the  standard  set  by  him.  When  enough 
track  had  been  found  on  which  to  make  a  trip,  Pull- 
man invited  a  judicious  selection  of  influential  men, 
editors  of  papers  with  the  best  circulation,  and  rail- 
road officials  who  would  be  most  useful,  to  come  and 
see  his  car  and  take  a  ride  on  it. 

The  guests  found  a  car  so  very  different  from  any- 
thing the  world  had  ever  seen  that  they  were  filled 
with  wonder  and  delight.  The  Pioneer  was  not  only 
of  enormous  size,  but  it  rested  on  eight-wheeled 
trucks  instead  of  four-wheeled,  had  a  raised  deck  with 
ventilating  transoms,  and  was  a  beautiful  example  of 
cabinet-making  and  decorative  art.  All  were  willing 
to  believe  that  the  Pioneer  had  cost  eighteen  thou- 
sand dollars.  The  best  passenger  cars  of  that  period 
cost  four  thousand  dollars.  One  thing  that  puzzled 
the  guests  was  the  lack  of  anything  that  looked  like 
sleeping  accommodations.  They  had  understood 
that  they  had  been  invited  to  inspect  a  sleeping  car. 
But  where  were  the  passengers  to  sleep? 

Pullman  smiled,  and  guessed  they  had  better  have 
something  to  eat  before  they  talked  about  sleeping. 
At  a  word  from  him  the  first  sleeping  car  porters 
brought  out  little  tables,  which  fitted  between  the 
seats,  just  as  do  the  tables  in  use  in  Pullman  cars  to- 
day, and  furnished  them  with  linen,  silver,  and  china. 
The  delighted  guests  sat  down  to  a  hot,  well-served 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     175 

meal.  After  the  cigars,  Pullman  requested  all  hands 
to  step  forward  into  a  day  coach  for  a  few  moments. 
When  tHey  were  called  back  a  short  time  later,  they 
found  that  a  complete  transformation  had  been  made. 
The  seats  and  tables  had  disappeared,  and  in  their 
places  inviting  looking  beds,  completely  furnished 
with  fine  linen  and  blankets,  could  be  seen  through 
neatly  parted  curtains.  This  sleeping  car  bore  no 
resemblance  to  the  barren  torture  chambers  they  had 
knowrn  before.  Again  there  was  a  round  of  applause. 
Then  the  guests  undressed  and  went  to  bed.  Half 
an  hour  later  all  rose  and  dressed  and  watched  with 
keen  interest  while  the  porters  transformed  the  sleeper 
back  into  a  day  car.  The  rest  of  the  trip  was  spent 
in  discussing  the  marvel  and  in  examining  its  details 
over  and  over  again. 

The  Pioneer  caused  a  tremendous  sensation.  All 
the  papers  and  magazines  published  descriptions  of 
it.  Everybody  was  talking  about  Pullman's  sleeping 
car.  All  agreed  that  traveling  in  such  cars  would  be 
delightful,  but  the  verdict  was  equally  unanimous 
that  they  were  a  commercial  impossibility.  Why,  men 
would  go  to  bed  with  their  muddy  boots  on;  they 
would  expectorate  on  the  carpets  and  upholstery; 
they  would  mar  the  beautifully  finished  cabinet-work, 
and — oh,  well,  it  couldn't  be  done.  Railroad  men  and 
personal  friends  redoubled  their  efforts  to  dissuade 
Pullman  from  inviting  ruin.  To  all  these  objections 
Pullman  made  one  comprehensive  answer,  which  he 
had  occasion  to  repeat  many  times  in  the  course  of 
his  life: 

"  I  have  always  held  that  people  are  very  greatly 
influenced  by  physical  surroundings.  Take  the 


176  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

roughest  man,  a  man  whose  lines  have  always  brought 
him  into  the  coarsest  and  poorest  surroundings,  and 
bring  him  into  a  room  elegantly  carpeted  and  fur- 
nished, and  the  effect  on  his  bearing  is  pronounced 
and  immediate.  I  am  not  at  all  afraid  people  will 
go  to  bed  with  their  boots  on.  I  am  convinced  that 
if  I  devote  all  my  energies  to  providing  handsome 
cars  the  financial  returns  will  take  care  of  them- 
selves." 

Soon  after  the  Pioneer  was  completed,  it  was  used 
in  the  Lincoln  funeral  train.  This  necessitated  cut- 
ting down  the  station  platforms  between  Chicago  and 
Springfield.  A  few  months  later  the  car  was  wanted 
to  convey  General  Grant  from  Detroit  to  Chicago, 
so  the  Michigan  Central  stations  and  bridges  were 
hastily  adjusted  to  the  standard  fixed  by  Pullman. 

Once  the  road  was  adapted  to  them  the  Michigan 
Central  was  ready  to  try  Pullman  cars.  In  pur- 
suance of  his  lifelong  policy,  Pullman  set  out  to  make 
a  great  improvement  in  the  new  cars.  When  the  sec- 
ond Pullman  car  was  completed  it  had  cost  twenty- 
four  thousand  dollars.  The  first  Pullman  cars  for 
the  Michigan  Central  settled  a  question  which  has 
been  a  perennial  source  of  worry  to  legislators; 
namely,  the  proper  charge  for  a  berth.  Unfor- 
tunately, the  legislators  keep  forgetting  it  and  trying 
to  settle  it  all  over  again.  It  was  impossible  to  sell  a 
berth  in  a  car  that  had  cost  twenty-four  thousand 
dollars  for  a  dollar  and  a  half,  which  was  the  rate 
in  the  Woodruff  sleeping  car  then  used  on  the  Mich- 
igan Central.  But  when  Pullman  announced  that 
he  proposed  to  charge  two  dollars  a  berth,  President 
Joy  was  horrified. 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     177 

"  My  dear  sir,"  he  exclaimed,  "  that  is  not  to  be 
thought  of.  If  you  undertake  to  charge  two  dollars 
a  berth  when  other  roads  only  charge  a  dollar  and  a 
half  between  Detroit  and  Chicago,  you  will  simply 
drive  all  the  night  travel  to  our  competitors.  It  is  no 
concern  of  mine  that  you  have  chosen  to  spend  so 
much  money  for  useless  luxuries  for  people  who  will 
not  appreciate  them  and  do  not  want  them." 

"  People  are  willing  to  pay  for  the  best,  if  they 
get  the  worth  of  their  money,"  returned  Pullman. 
"  But  what  is  the  use  of  spending  time  in  useless  argu- 
ment over  a  subject  which  is  so  easily  susceptible  of 
demonstration?  Run  your  cheap  cars  as  usual  at  a 
dollar  and  a  half  a  berth  and  put  my  cars  on  the  same 
train  at  two  dollars  a  berth,  and  let  the  public  choose 
between  them.  If  the  traveling  public  thinks  the 
beauty  of  finish,  the  comfort,  and  the  safety  of  the 
new  cars  worth  two  dollars  a  night,  there  are  the 
twenty-four-thousand-dollar  cars;  if,  on  the  other 
hand,  they  are  satisfied  with  the  less  attractive  sur- 
roundings at  a  saving  of  fifty  cents,  the  cheaper  cars 
are  at  their  disposal.  We  will  submit  the  plain  facts 
on  both  sides  of  the  issue  without  argument." 

This  was  such  a  practical  suggestion  that  it  was 
adopted  without  parley.  Not  only  did  the  patrons  of 
the  road  utterly  refuse  to  look  at  the  old  cars  so  long 
as  any  two-dollar  berths  were  available,  but  those  who 
were  crowded  out  of  the  Pullman  complained  so 
loudly  at  being  compelled  to  put  up  with  dollar-and- 
a-half  berths,  that  within  six  weeks  the  cheap  cars  were 
taken  off  altogether.  Instead  of  driving  traffic  away, 
the  more  expensive  palace  cars  drew  travel  from  the 
other  roads,  so  that  competing  lines  were  forced  to 


178  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

make  terms  with  Pullman.  Instead  of  a  leveling 
down  to  the  cheaper  prices,  there  was  a  leveling  up 
to  the  higher. 

When  the  Union  Pacific  and  Central  Pacific  were 
opened,  through  trains,  equipped  with  Pullman  cars, 
made  the  run  between  Omaha  and  San  Francisco. 
This  was  a  practical  demonstration  of  the  conveni- 
ence of  the  Pullman  system  of  operation  that  was  con- 
vincing. 

Soon  after  the  Pullman  Company  was  organized, 
in  1867,  parlor  cars  were  introduced  on  day  runs. 
Then  in  the  same  year  the  first  hotel  car,  the  "  Presi- 
dent," a  sleeping  car  with  kitchen  and  pantry,  a  buffet 
car  it  would  be  called  now,  was  introduced  on  the 
Great  Western  Railway,  of  Canada.  It  was  the  first 
car  in  the  world  built  to  serve  meals  en  route.  In 
1868  the  first  regular  dining  car,  the  "  Delmonico," 
was  placed  in  service  on  the  Chicago  and  Alton. 

The  Pullman  idea  was  not  based  on  beauty  of  sur- 
roundings and  comfort  alone,  but  also  on  safety.  The 
"  Pioneer,"  and  every  Pullman  car  that  followed  it, 
were  so  much  heavier  and  stronger  than  the  ordinary 
coaches  in  the  train  that  in  case  of  accident  they  almost 
always  escaped  injury.  Pullman  wanted  something 
better  than  a  strongly  built  car;  he  wanted  a  solid 
train.  In  1886  he  began  working  on  a  scheme  for 
continuous  trains.  As  early  as  1852  patents  had 
been  granted  for  canvas  diaphragms  between  cars. 
They  were  adopted  on  the  Naugatuck  Railroad,  in 
Connecticut,  in  1857,  but  were  discontinued  after  four 
years.  They  were  flimsy  and  practically  useless,  for 
they  did  not  attempt  to  hold  the  cars  in  position,  but 
were  merely  intended  to  keep  passengers  from  fall- 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     179 

ing  off  in  passing  from  one  platform  to  another  while 
the  train  was  in  motion. 

In  1887  the  modern  vestibule  was  patented.  By 
means  of  this  an  entire  train  was  made  into  one  solid 
yet  sinuous  whole  by  elastic  diaphragms  faced  with 
heavy  steel  frames,  held  in  place  by  strong  springs. 
The  wide  vestibule  made  it  possible  for  the  passenger 
to  go  from  his  sitting-room  to  his  dining-room  or  his 
bedroom  under  one  roof,  just  as  he  would  in  his  own 
home.  Vestibuled  trains  required  less  power  to  pull 
them,  because  the  air-pockets  between  the  cars  were 
reduced  to  a  minimum.  They  also  reduced  the  dan- 
ger from  collisions  almost  to  the  vanishing  point. 
Several  vestibuled  trains  have  collided  at  a  speed  of 
forty  miles  an  hour  without  injury  to  passengers. 
No  safety  appliance,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
the  air-brake,  has  yet  been  devised  which  has  proved 
more  valuable  for  the  protection  of  travelers  than 
this  apparently  simple  device.  An  exhibition  vesti- 
buled train  made  the  rounds  of  the  principal  cities  in 
1887,  and  then,  with  three  others,  was  placed  in 
service  on  the  Pennsylvania  road.  The  result  was 
an  increase  of  seventy  per  cent  in  travel  on  the  lim- 
ited trains. 

But  to  return  to  the  New  York  railroads  of  early 
days:  On  reaching  Albany  the  passenger  for  New 
York  was  obliged  to  continue  his  journey  by  river  in 
summer  and  by  stage  in  winter,  for  the  connecting 
rail  link  was  not  built  for  several  years. 

A  railroad  from  New  York  to  Albany  was  first 
chartered  in  1832.  The  capital  was  fixed  at  three 
million  dollars,  and  the  State,  as  usual,  reserved  the 
right  to  purchase  the  road.  The  idea  was  pretty  gen- 


180  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

eral  in  the  early  days  that  the  State  should  own  the 
highways,  including  the  railroads.  But  nothing 
came  of  this  scheme,  and  the  time  for  construction 
was  extended  to  1838. 

In  1842  the  people  of  Poughkeepsie,  weary  of  wait- 
ing for  the  building  of  the  promised  road,  employed 
an  engineer  to  survey  a  route  along  the  Hudson  from 
New  York  to  Albany.  He  reported  that  the  route 
was  feasible.  There  the  matter  rested  for  three  years. 
Then  a  convention  was  held  at  Poughkeepsie,  at 
which  a  re-survey  was  decided  upon,  but  still  nothing 
happened. 

Finally,  on  January  23,  1846,  Mayor  Havemeyer 
called  a  meeting  in  New  York  City  to  consider  the 
desirability  of  building  the  road  to  Albany.  The 
New  York  and  Harlem  Railroad  Company  had  been 
chartered  to  build  such  a  line,  but  it  was  not  yet  com- 
pleted. The  result  of  this  meeting  was  the  granting 
of  a  charter  to  the  Hudson  River  Railroad  on  May 
26,  1846.  One  month  later  the  entire  capital  stock 
of  three  million  dollars  had  been  subscribed,  most  of 
it  being  taken  in  New  York  City. 

Work  was  begun  promptly,  and  on  October  1, 
1851,  the  entire  line  was  opened  for  business.  The 
first  passenger  station  in  New  York  City  was  at 
Chambers  Street  and  College  Place,  to  which  point 
the  cars  were  drawn  by  horses  from  Thirteenth  Street 
and  Eleventh  Avenue.  The  Hudson  River  Bridge  at 
Albany  was  not  opened  until  February  22,  1866. 

In  1850  the  alarming  discovery  was  made  that  the 
railroads,  which  had  been  intended  merely  for  passen- 
ger traffic,  were  becoming  formidable  competitors  of 
the  Erie  Canal.  When  this  discovery  was  made  the 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     181 

whole  commonwealth  was  agitated  by  the  problems 
presented.  There  was  a  strong  sentiment  in  favor  of 
legislation  that  would  prohibit  any  such  competition. 

As  late  as  1858  the  people  of  the  State  were  still 
holding  mass-meetings  and  resolving  that  the  rail- 
roads had  no  right  to  compete  with  the  canal. 

It  was  strenuously  urged  that  canals  had  a  natural 
right  to  carry  heavy  freight,  and  that  it  was  suicidal 
folly  for  railroads  to  try  to  handle  such  business. 
Managers  who  were  trying  to  develop  their  roads  into 
heavy  freight  carriers  were  denounced  for  ruining 
themselves  and  the  stockholders.  But  the  march  of 
progress  could  not  be  delayed;  the  canals  had  to  cut 
rates  to  meet  the  competition  of  the  railroads. 

Tolls  were  levied  on  railroad  freight  the  same  as  on 
canal  traffic.  Some  of  the  roads  in  the  chain  from 
Albany  to  Buffalo  were  limited  by  their  charters  to 
the  carrying  of  passengers ;  and  they  had  a  hard  time 
getting  permission  to  include  the  transportation  of 
freight  in  their  business. 

The  outcome  of  the  agitation  was  the  first  impor- 
tant railroad  consolidation  in  history.  On  May  17, 
1853,  ten  independent  railroads,  including  the  seven 
forming  the  route  from  Albany  to  Buffalo,  with  their 
branches  and  feeders,  having  a  total  of  five  hundred 
and  forty-two  miles  of  track,  were  consolidated  under 
the  title  of  the  New  York  Central  Railroad. 

The  charter  was  to  run  for  five  hundred  years,  and 
the  capital  was  fixed  at  twenty-three  million  eighty- 
five  thousand  dollars,  which  was  the  aggregate 
amount  of  the  capital  of  the  consolidated  companies. 

The  New  York  Central  began  business  with  187 
first-class  passenger  coaches,  55  second-class,  65  bag- 


182  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

gage,  mail,  and  express  cars,  and  1,702  freight  cars. 
There  were  298  miles  of  main  line,  236  miles  of 
branch  line,  and  29  miles  of  leased  road. 

The  average  speed  of  passenger  trains,  including 
stops,  had  increased  from  an  average  of  twelve  to 
fifteen  miles  in  1840  to  twenty-five  miles  an  hour, 
express  trains  forty  miles  an  hour,  and  freight  trains 
fourteen  miles  an  hour.  Although  the  first-class 
passenger  rate  was  only  two  cents  a  mile  as  com- 
pared with  five  cents  a  mile  in  1840,  the  passenger 
earnings  for  the  first  year  after  consolidation  were 
$3,151,514,  as  compared  with  $2,479,820  freight  earn- 
ings. The  business  was  extremely  profitable,  for  the 
company  paid  in  dividends  that  year  $1,125,506. 

Notwithstanding  the  advantages  which  resulted 
from  this  step,  consolidation  did  not  become  fash- 
ionable for  some  years.  The  first  act  in  the  railroad 
drama,  the  period  of  construction,  having  now  been 
played  out,  the  scene  shifts  to  Wall  Street. 

Cornelius  Vanderbilt,  having  amassed  a  modest 
competence  of  a  dozen  millions  from  the  operation  of 
his  steamship  lines,  selected  Hudson  River  Railroad 
stock  as  a  suitable  investment  in  1863.  Wall  Street, 
discovering  this  fact,  prepared  a  nice  little  surprise 
for  him  by  selling  Hudson  River  short. 

Vanderbilt  obligingly  absorbed  all  offers  until  he 
had  the  entire  stock  of  the  road  in  his  hands.  Then 
he  invited  the  shorts  to  step  up  and  settle  at  his  own 
price. 

The  New  York  and  Harlem  Railroad  already 
being  in  his  hands,  Vanderbilt  had  a  bill  introduced 
in  the  legislature  for  the  consolidation  of  the  two 
roads — the  second  consolidation  in  the  present  New 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     183 

York  Central  system.  Wall  Street  tried  the  same 
game  on  him  after  "  seeing  "  certain  legislators  who 
were  supposed  to  know  how  to  do  things  at  Albany. 

The  result  was  the  same  as  in  the  first  attempt, 
except  that  the  shorts  sold  twenty-seven  thousand 
more  shares  than  had  ever  been  issued,  which  obliged 
Vanderbilt  to  fix  the  low  figure  of  283  as  the  price  at 
which  the  associated  shorts  might  settle  in  order  to 
avert  a  panic. 

About  the  time  this  little  affair  had  blown  over, 
the  New  York  Central  Railroad  directors  thought  it 
would  be  only  neighborly  to  invite  the  newcomer  in 
the  railroad  world  to  take  a  ride  over  their  road.  Mr. 
Vanderbilt  took  great  pleasure  in  accepting  the  invi- 
tation. He  did  not  communicate  his  impressions  of 
what  he  saw,  but  an  idea  of  them  may  be  formed 
from  what  followed. 

The  New  York  Central  management,  having  its 
eastern  terminus  on  the  Hudson  River,  felt  pretty 
secure,  and,  consequently,  independent,  for  its  grow- 
ing traffic  could  be  sent  by  water  to  New  York.  But 
they  had  forgotten  that  navigation  was  interrupted 
for  several  months  during  the  winter. 

Consequently,  when  at  the  close  of  navigation  in 
1865,  Commodore  Vanderbilt,  without  any  notice, 
withdrew  the  terminus  of  the  Hudson  River  Railroad 
to  the  eastern  bank  of  the  river  at  Albany  and  re- 
fused to  receive  freight  from  the  New  York  Central, 
the  stockholders  of  the  latter  road  were  taken  com- 
pletely by  surprise.  There  was  a  rush  to  sell,  and 
down  went  the  price. 

Vanderbilt,  by  a  strange  coincidence,  had  been  sell- 
ing New  York  Central  short,  and  his  friends,  oddly 


184  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

enough,  had  been  doing  the  same  thing.  When  no- 
body else  wanted  New  York  Central  stock,  after  its 
communication  with  New  York  City  had  been  cut, 
the  Vanderbilt  party  obligingly  took  it  off  the  hold- 
ers' hands  at  greatly  reduced  prices. 

No  one  knew  the  extent  of  the  clean-up  until  the 
next  annual  meeting  of  the  stockholders.  The  polls 
were  opened  at  Albany,  as  usual,  for  the  election  of 
a  board  of  directors.  Not  a  vote  was  cast  all  day 
long  until  just  a  moment  before  the  polls  were  to 
close. 

Then  Commodore  Vanderbilt  walked  into  the  room 
and  deposited  a  single  ballot.  On  opening  the  ballot- 
box  immediately  afterward  it  was  found  that  this  lone 
ballot  represented  eighteen  million  dollars  out  of  a 
total  capital  stock  of  twenty-four  million  dollars. 
The  new  board  of  directors,  who  had  been  brought  up 
from  New  York,  was  thereupon  called  into  the  room, 
and  proceeded  to  elect  Cornelius  Vanderbilt  presi- 
dent. 

The  consolidation  of  the  New  York  Central  and 
the  Hudson  River  Railroads  followed  soon  after. 

These  interesting  events  were  celebrated  with  a 
quiet  little  melon-party  at  the  home  of  Horace  V. 
Clark  one  Saturday  evening  in  December,  1868.  The 
melon-cutting  took  the  form  of  an  eighty  per  cent 
stock  dividend  distribution  of  twenty-three  million 
dollars. 

The  certificates  were  equal  to  stock  in  every  par- 
ticular except  the  right  to  vote.  New  York  Central 
had  closed  at  133  Saturday.  It  opened  at  155  Mon- 
day, and  sold  up  to  159. 

The  spectacular  changes  in  the  financial  history  of 


GENESIS  OF  THE  VANDERBILT  SYSTEM     185 

the  New  York  Central  were  immediately  followed 
by  a  physical  transformation  even  more  extraordi- 
nary. Commodore  Vanderbilt  was  no  speculator. 
He  wanted  railroads  that  would  earn  dividends,  and 
to  achieve  this  end,  to  his  way  of  thinking,  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  to  have  nothing  but  the  best  in 
both  men  and  materials. 

Staffs  were  reorganized,  bridges  rebuilt,  heavier 
rails  laid,  curves  straightened,  grades  reduced,  better 
and  heavier  engines  and  more  of  them  provided,  the 
best  cars  the  builders  then  knew  how  to  turn  out  pur- 
chased, improved  methods  introduced,  and  rates  re- 
duced. 

The  net  result  was  that  three-quarters  of  a  century 
after  the  Mohawk  and  Hudson  Railroad  was  opened 
for  traffic  it  had  become  a  part  of  a  great  railroad 
system  comprising  thirteen  operating  railway  com- 
panies, with  20,000  miles  of  first-class  road,  with 
6,558  additional  miles  under  the  same  influence,  and 
still  another  5,524  miles  working  in  harmony  with  the 
great  system  through  having  New  York  Central 
directors  on  their  boards,  making  a  grand  total  of 
32,301  miles  of  railroad. 

This  Vanderbilt  system  takes  in  13.27  per  cent  of 
the  gross  operating  receipts  of  all  the  railroads  in 
the  United  States,  pays  15.38  per  cent  of  all  the  taxes 
paid  by  railroads  in  the  United  States,  and  pays 
$20,348,399  in  annual  dividends,  which  is  12.94  per 
cent  of  all  the  railroad  dividends,  and  disburses  $154,- 
630,408  in  operating  expenses  annually. 


CHAPTER  VI 
INCUBATOR  RAILROADS 

at  ten  thousand,  going,  going — gentle- 
men,  are  you  all  done?     Going  at  ten  thou- 
sand once,  going  at  ten  thousand  twice " 

*     ^3  ^j 

The  auctioneer  was  the  sheriff  of  Sangamon 
County,  Illinois.  He  was  standing  on  the  steps  of 
the  Capitol  on  the  26th  of  April,  1847,  facing  a  little 
knot  of  idlers,  who  lounged  in  the  warm  spring  sun- 
shine, watching  him  as  the  most  engaging  diversion 
that  offered  at  the  moment. 

The  least  interested  man  in  sight,  so  far  as  out- 
ward appearances  went,  was  N.  H.  Kidgley,  of 
Springfield.  He  had  made  the  only  bid  offered  for 
all  that  remained  of  a  section  of  the  Northern  Cross 
Railroad,  the  property  of  the  State  of  Illinois. 

This  bit  of  railroad,  twenty-four  miles  long,  had 
cost  the  taxpayers  $406,233.  It  was  the  sole  asset 
left  to  show  for  a  debt  of  $4,107,746.  Even  at  that 
it  wasn't  much  to  speak  of  as  railroads  go. 

Its  only  locomotive  had  been  broken  up  for  scrap- 
iron,  its  cars  were  falling  to  pieces,  the  iron  had  been 
used  for  sled-shoes  and  similar  purposes  by  the 
farmers  along  the  route,  and  the  ties  for  fence-posts 
and  firewood.  But  the  right-of-way  was  as  sound 
as  a  dollar. 

Across  the  street  in  a  little  barber  shop  an  elderly 
gentleman,  with  a  pronounced  waist-line,  bearing 

186 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  187 

upon  his  swelling  waistcoat  circumstantial  evidence 
that  he  chewed  tobacco,  dozed  in  the  chair  while  the 
barber  leisurely  wrestled  with  his  wiry  beard.  The 
elderly  gentleman  was  aroused  by  the  sound  of  his 
own  snoring. 

His  glance  wandered  through  the  window  to  the 
little  group  of  idlers  and  then  to  the  capitol  steps  to 
ascertain  the  object  of  their  curiosity.  Suddenly  he 
sat  upright  as  if  he  had  just  recalled  something 
important. 

"  Here ;  wipe  me  off  quick,  Joe,"  he  commanded. 

"  All  right,  Colonel  Johnson,  there  you  are,  sir," 
replied  the  barber,  whipping  off  the  towel. 

Colonel  Johnson  ambled  across  the  street.  Just 
as  the  auctioneer  was  in  the  act  of  opening  his  mouth 
to  knock  down  the  railroad  to  Kidgley,  Colonel  John- 
son bawled: 

"  One  hundred  dollars." 

The  sheriff  looked  up  in  surprise.  Ridgley  turned 
toward  the  colonel  with  an  aggrieved  air  and  fairly 
gasped  with  astonishment,  while  the  idlers  almost 
stood  erect  in  the  intensity  of  their  excitement. 

The  bidding  was  fast  and  furious  until  the  price 
had  been  run  up  to  twenty  thousand  dollars.  The 
affair  was  growing  serious  for  Ridgley.  He  walked 
up  to  Colonel  Johnson. 

"  See  here,  colonel,"  he  inquired,  "  are  you  bidding 
for  yourself  or  somebody  else?  " 

"  I'm  bidding  for  some  parties  in  St.  Louis,"  was 
the  reply. 

At  the  same  time  there  was  just  the  trace  of  a 
flutter  in  the  colonel's  left  eyelid;  or  it  might  have 
been  an  optical  illusion  on  the  part  of  Ridgley. 


188  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

"  Well,  wouldn't  you  just  as  soon  accept  a  com- 
mission from  people  in  Springfield  as  in  St.  Louis? " 

"  Oh,  certainly,"  said  the  colonel,  shifting  his  quid 
and  walking  nonchalantly  away.  Thereupon  the 
road  was  knocked  down  to  Ridgley  for  twenty  thou- 
sand dollars. 

Next  day  the  enterprising  Colonel  Johnson  saun- 
tered into  Ridgley's  office,  where  he  was  handed  a 
check  for  one  thousand  dollars.  That  check  was  the 
nearest  approach  to  real  money  involved  in  the  sale 
of  the  Northern  Cross  Railroad,  for  Ridgley  paid 
the  twenty  thousand  dollars  in  State  bonds  which  he 
had  bought  for  nine  cents  on  the  dollar  and  turned 
over  to  the  State  at  par. 

The  bang  of  the  auctioneer's  gavel  closed  the  first 
chapter  in  the  history  of  the  first  railroad  built  in 
the  country  inclosed  by  the  Alleghanies,  the  Ohio, 
and  the  Mississippi,  and  opened  another  which  led 
up  to  the  foundation  of  what  is  now  the  Wabash 
Railway  system.  Also  it  ended  a  most  curious  era 
in  the  development  of  the  Middle  West. 

To  begin  at  the  beginning  of  that  first  chapter, 
it  may  be  said  that  in  the  early  thirties  the  whole 
region  from  the  western  slope  of  the  Alleghanies  to 
the  Mississippi  had  become  one  vast  incubator  for 
railroad  schemes.  If  money  had  been  as  abundant 
as  exuberant  optimism,  every  man  would  have  had 
his  own  private  railroad  long  before  the  nineteenth 
century  was  half  completed. 

True,  these  brothers  of  Colonel  Sellers  had  exceed- 
ingly vague  ideas  of  what  a  railroad  was;  but  they 
were  unanimous  in  their  abiding  faith  that  the  word 
was  a  synonym  for  "  highway  "  to  untold  millions 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  189 

which  danced  in  the  iridescent  air  before  their  en- 
raptured eyes. 

The  incidental  fact  that  none  of  them  had  any 
money  troubled  them  not  at  all.  What  was  more 
simple  than  to  call  railroads  into  being  by  legislative 
fiat  and  then  let  the  State  government  foot  the  bills? 
Few  of  these  fiat  railroads  ever  progressed  beyond  the 
stock-selling  stage,  the  majority  did  not  live  even 
that  long.  It  was  a  time  of  rosy  dreams  of  opulence 
and  of  weird  financial  jugglery,  in  which  nothing 
multiplied  by  nothing  equaled  whatever  the  promo- 
ters chose  to  say  it  did.  Yet,  oddly  enough,  out  of 
these  disordered  phantoms  have  been  evolved  some 
of  the  great  railroads  of  to-day. 

To  Illinois  must  be  awarded  first  honors  in  the  art 
of  building  railroads  by  statute.  The  people  had 
been  building  towns  on  paper,  until  the  industry  had 
begun  to  pall  upon  them.  Then  Governor  Joseph 
Duncan,  in  a  message  to  the  special  session  of  the  leg- 
islature in  1836,  diverted  attention  from  towns  to 
railroads.  The  suggestion  caught  the  popular  fancy 
at  once. 

Agitation  for  a  bewildering  scheme  of  canals  and 
railroads  was  taken  up  by  a  certain  type  of  patriots 
and  statesmen  who,  having  nothing  to  lose,  could 
afford  to  be  sanguine  to  the  point  of  certainty,  if  not 
beyond.  A  great  internal  improvement  convention 
was  held,  at  which  the  immediate  execution  of  a  stu- 
pendous program  was  demanded. 

From  the  time  the  first  internal  improvement 
schemes,  an  act  passed  January  28,  1831,  for  survey- 
ing a  route  for  a  canal  or  railroad  in  St.  Clair  County, 
and  for  the  Illinois  and  Michigan  Canal  from  Chi- 


190  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

cago  to  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Illinois  River, 
sanctioned  on  February  15,  1831,  were  formulated 
up  to  1835  opinion  was  about  equally  divided  in  Illi- 
nois on  the  relative  merits  of  canals  and  railroads. 
Then  the  railroads  began  to  forge  ahead  in  popular 
estimation.  The  Chicago  and  Vincennes  Railroad 
was  incorporated  in  1834,  but  nothing  further  was 
done  in  the  matter  for  years. 

The  legislature,  by  an  act  to  which  the  Governor 
affixed  his  signature  February  27,  1837,  appropri- 
ated $10,237,000  to  launch  the  internal  improvement 
scheme.  This  imposed  a  debt  of  $34.10  per  capita 
upon  the  scanty  population  of  poor,  hard-working 
pioneers  at  a  time  when  the  State  was  already  in  debt 
and  without  revenues  sufficient  to  meet  current  ex- 
penses. Chicago,  then  a  village  with  a  population 
of  1,470,  had  to  have  a  garrison  to  protect  it  from  the 
Indians.  The  temptation  to  achieve  sudden  opu- 
lence by  statute,  however,  was  too  strong  to  be 
resisted. 

Every  man  who  had  a  railroad  scheme  secured  for 
it  from  thirty  thousand  dollars  up  to  one  million 
eight  hundred  thousand  dollars,  according  to  the 
amount  of  influence  he  could  command.  As  a  begin- 
ning, one  thousand  three  hundred  and  forty  miles  of 
railroad  were  to  be  constructed  in  the  State,  and 
every  river  was  to  be  made  navigable.  To  allay 
jealousies  and  heartburnings  the  sum  of  two  hundred 
thousand  dollars  for  roads  and  bridges  was  distrib- 
uted among  the  back  counties  which  could  not  com- 
mand the  influence  necessary  to  secure  a  railroad. 

A  board  of  fund  commissioners  was  created  and 
ordered  to  commerce  operations  forthwith.  In  order 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  191 

to  avert  local  jealousies  and  assure  every  community 
an  equal  chance,  the  commissioners  were  instructed 
to  begin  work  simultaneously  at  both  ends  of  every 
road,  and  in  the  middle,  too,  if  it  could  be  reached  by 
a  navigable  stream. 

The  legislature  of  1838  appropriated  five  million 
dollars  more,  and  authorized  the  issue  of  additional 
bonds  to  the  amount  of  four  million  dollars. 

Of  the  score  of  railroads  planned  in  Illinois,  none 
was  carried  far  enough  to  admit  of  laying  rails  except 
the  Northern  Cross,  which  was  to  run  from  Quincy 
on  the  Mississippi  to  the  Indiana  line.  Ground  was 
broken  for  this  road  at  Meredosia,  on  the  east  bank 
of  the  Illinois  River,  late  in  August,  1837.  The  cer- 
emony occupied  the  entire  day,  and  the  undivided 
attention  of  all  the  inhabitants  for  many  miles  around. 

The  contractors  having  failed  to  gather  a  working 
force  by  offers  of  twenty  dollars  a  month  and  board, 
James  Harkness,  who  was  employed  as  master  car- 
penter to  build  the  bridges,  went  to  Louisville  to 
get  men.  His  offer  of  nineteen  dollars  a  month  and 
board,  with  eight  jiggers  of  whisky  a  day  as  a 
clincher,  soon  secured  a  full  force.  Robert  Reynolds 
and  Joseph  Williams,  expert  whip-sawyers,  were  en- 
gaged to  saw  the  bridge  timbers. 

Harkness,  as  engineer,  had  also  to  lay  out  the 
road  from  Meredosia.  He  got  on  swimmingly  until 
he  ran  his  line  straight  through  a  cabin  on  the  prairie 
belonging  to  C.  E.  Lazenby,  an  Englishman.  Mrs. 
Lazenby,  who  was  famed  for  her  flow  of  language, 
came  out  and  berated  poor  Harkness  until  he  was 
glad  to  go  back  and  change  his  line  so  as  to  leave  the 
cabin  some  distance  to  one  side. 


192  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Thereupon  Mrs.  Lazenby  made  peace  with  the  rail- 
road. Harkness  taught  her  how  to  make  egg-nog 
and  milk  punch.  She  bought  another  cow  to  increase 
the  milk  supply,  and  made  enough  money  from  the 
patronage  of  the  railroad  builders  to  pay  for  a  good 
two-story  frame  house. 

Strap-rails  from  the  East  were  brought  up  the  river 
to  Meredosia  in  the  spring  of  1838,  and  on  May  9th 
track-laying  was  begun.  The  track  was  of  the 
customary  construction  of  the  day.  Longitudinal 
wooden  sleepers  a  foot  square  were  laid  on  the  ground. 

On  these  ties  were  laid,  and  on  the  ties  were  wooden 
rails  or  stringers  three  inches  wide  at  the  bottom, 
tapering  to  two  and  one-quarter  inches  at  the  top. 
On  these  the  strap-iron  rails,  five-eighths  inch  thick, 
two  inches  wide,  and  fifteen  to  twenty  feet  long,  were 
spiked  with  ordinary  twenty-penny  nails. 

November  8,  1838,  the  first  puff  of  a  locomotive 
was  heard  in  Illinois.  It  was  not  much  of  a  locomo- 
tive. It  had  a  single  pair  of  drivers,  two  feet  in  diam- 
eter, no  cab,  no  pilot,  no  whistle,  no  bell,  no  spark 
arrester,  but  it  made  a  great  hit.  Crowds  swarmed 
into  town  clamoring  to  ride  on  the  "  thing,"  and 
audibly  wondering  what  made  the  thing's  wheels  go 
round. 

The  "  thing  "  hauled  a  select  party,  including  the 
oldest  inhabitant,  Daniel  Waldo,  to  the  end  of  the 
eight  miles  of  track  and  back  again,  to  the  unbounded 
astonishment  of  the  natives.  The  trip  was  somewhat 
delayed  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  engineer  was  so 
overcome  by  the  frequency  of  hospitable  invitations 
to  take  something  in  honor  of  the  auspicious  event 
that  he  had  to  be  carried  to  a  hotel  to  recover. 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS        193 

During  the  winter  this  first  locomotive  did  occa- 
sional service  in  hauling  ties  and  rails  on  four-wheeled 
cars  ten  feet  long.  The  local  papers  of  July  1,  1839, 
carried  the  first  railroad  advertisement  printed  in  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  announcing  that  three  "  pleasure 
cars  "  had  been  received  and  that  "  extensive  arrange- 
ments will  be  made  for  the  entertainment  of  pleasure 
parties  desirous  of  witnessing  a  railroad  in  actual 
operation." 

Two  trips  a  day  were  made  between  Meredosia 
and  Morgan  City,  the  distance  of  twelve  miles  being 
covered  in  two  hours.  The  train  would  stop  any- 
where for  freight  or  passengers.  There  were  fre- 
quent races  between  the  train  and  the  stages,  in  which 
the  stages  won  as  often  as  they  were  beaten.  By  win- 
ter the  track  had  been  laid  to  Jacksonville.  The 
engineers  planned  to  build  the  road  north  of  town; 
but  the  citizens  were  so  eager  to  revel  in  the  posses- 
sion of  a  real  railroad  that  in  obedience  to  public 
clamor  the  rails  were  laid  right  down  the  principal 
street  to  the  public  square. 

In  the  first  snowstorm  the  "  pleasure  car  "  came  to 
grief.  After  struggling  slowly  along  until  within  a 
mile  and  a  half  of  Morgan  City,  the  train  stuck  fast, 
and  the  passengers,  to  their  intense  disgust,  had  to 
continue  their  journey  on  foot.  For  the  rest  of  the 
winter  the  movements  of  the  train  were  extremely 
uncertain. 

Construction  east  of  Jacksonville  was  pushed 
throughout  1840  and  1841,  and  on  February  15, 1842, 
the  first  train  entered  Springfield.  Three  round 
trips  a  week  were  made.  The  train  was  an  "  accom- 
modation "  train  literally.  The  need  of  business  was 


194  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

so  urgent  that  the  company  could  not  afford  to  stand 
on  dignity  or  make  conditions  with  its  patrons.  Any 
one  who  had  any  freight  to  offer  dumped  it  alongside 
the  track  wherever  it  suited  his  convenience,  and  the 
trainmen  loaded  it  when  they  came  along.  Freight 
for  delivery  was  put  off  opposite  the  nearest  house, 
and  the  charges  were  collected  at  some  future  date. 
At  Jacksonville  the  merchants  sent  draymen,  who 
unloaded  their  goods  and  returned  with  the  money 
when  convenient. 

But  no  amount  of  coddling  could  make  this  pioneer 
railroad  fifty-seven  miles  long  pay.  The  engineer 
finally  ran  the  locomotive  off  the  track  on  the  prairie 
east  of  Jacksonville,  burning  out  some  flues  and  in- 
flicting so  much  other  damage  that  the  discouraged 
management  let  it  lie  there  for  nearly  a  year. 

General  Semple,  of  Alton,  then  purchased  it,  and 
undertook  to  make  a  traction  engine  out  of  it  by  put- 
ting tires  two  feet  wide  on  the  wheels.  But  he  had 
to  take  a  yoke  of  oxen  along  to  pull  it  out  of  the  mud, 
and  after  a  journey  of  a  score  of  miles  across  the 
prairies  it  was  once  more  abandoned,  this  time  to  lie 
until  it  was  broken  up  for  old  iron. 

The  broad  tracks  across  the  prairie  left  in  this 
journey  were  the  cause  of  fearsome  wonderment 
among  the  natives,  being  taken  for  the  trail  of  a  mon- 
ster serpent.  Two  venturesome  settlers  plucked  up 
courage  to  follow  the  trail  with  guns  and  dogs  "  to 
see  what  the  critter  mout  be  like." 

After  the  locomotive  had  been  abandoned,  mules 
were  used  for  motive  power.  One  man  had  sole 
charge  of  the  train,  which  now  hauled  only  freight, 
when  it  could  get  any  to  haul.  The  roadbed  was 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS        195 

allowed  to  go  unrepaired,  the  strap-rails  were  stolen 
by  farmers  for  sled-shoes,  and  the  whole  outfit  finally 
fell  into  hopeless  wreck,  when  it  was  sold  as  already 
described.  The  other  sections  of  the  line  were  bought 
in  by  Kidgley  and  his  associates,  James  Dunlap  and 
ex-Governor  Joel  Mattison. 

The  track  was  repaired,  new  bridges  built,  U  rails 
laid,  three  locomotives  and  larger  cars  procured,  the 
track  through  the  main  street  of  Jacksonville  taken 
up,  to  the  infinite  relief  of  the  good  citizens  who  had 
demanded  that  the  railroad  should  pass  their  doors, 
and  in  the  fall  of  1849  daily  trains  were  operated  from 
Springfield  to  the  river,  making  the  trip  of  fifty- 
seven  miles  in  five  hours. 

Further  improvements  were  made  in  1850  and 
1851,  including  the  laying  of  T  rails.  In  1855  the 
road  was  finished  to  the  Indiana  line,  where  it  was 
joined  to  the  track  building  west  from  Toledo  by  the 
Toledo  and  Illinois  River  Railroad  Company  in 
Ohio,  and  the  Lake  Erie,  Wabash  and  St.  Louis  in 
Indiana.  The  companies  were  subsequently  merged 
and  later  became  the  Wabash. 

Another  Illinois  road  which  was  hatched  about  the 
same  period  as  the  Wabash,  and  ultimately  devel- 
oped into  a  great  system,  was  what  is  now  known  as 
the  Illinois  Central.  The  road  was  incorporated 
January  18, 1836,  to  be  built  with  State  aid  and  under 
State  supervision. 

But  the  company  became  insolvent  without  having 
accomplished  anything,  its  affairs  were  wound  up, 
and  on  March  6,  1843,  the  Great  Western  Railway 
Company  was  incorporated  to  build  the  Central  road. 
This  charter  was  repealed  March  3,  1845,  and  re- 


196  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

newed  February  10, 1849,  but  still  no  actual  progress 
was  made. 

In  December,  1849,  Stephen  A.  Douglas  intro- 
duced a  bill  for  a  land  grant  which  became  a  law 
in  January,  1850.  Under  the  terms  of  the  law 
2,595,000  acres  of  land  in  Illinois,  Mississippi,  and 
Alabama  were  granted  to  aid  in  building  a  railroad 
from  Chicago  to  Mobile.  This  was  not  the  first  land 
given  by  the  National  Government  to  aid  in  building 
a  railroad,  but  it  was  one  of  the  most  important 
grants. 

The  land  was  given  to  the  State,  and  the  Great 
Western  Company  was  induced  to  surrender  its  char- 
ter. January  15,  1851,  Governor  A.  C.  French  sent 
a  communication  to  the  legislature  transmitting  an 
offer  from  Eastern  capitalists  to  take  the  land  grant 
and  build  the  road  by  July  4,  1854.  An  act  incorpo- 
rating the  Illinois  Central  Railroad  accordingly  be- 
came a  law  on  February  10. 

Never  before  had  so  vast  a  work  as  the  construction 
of  seven  hundred  miles  of  railroad  been  undertaken 
by  one  company.  The  Illinois  papers  hoped  it  could 
be  done,  but  they  were  pretty  sure  it  never  would  be. 
However,  on  March  22,  1851,  the  board  of  directors, 
at  a  meeting  held  in  New  York,  chose  Roswell  B. 
Mason,  of  Bridgeport,  as  chief  engineer,  and  told  him 
to  see  what  he  could  do  about  it. 

The  route  was  separated  into  divisions,  a  surveying 
party  was  assigned  to  each,  and  the  entire  line  was 
located  and  under  construction  by  fall.  For  one 
hundred  and  thirty  miles  south  of  Chicago  the  coun- 
try was  unbroken  wilderness  in  which  large  herds  of 
deer  roamed.  Indeed,  there  were  not  a  dozen  towns 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  197 

along  the  route  of  sufficient  importance  to  be  desig- 
nated on  the  maps. 

The  first  construction  work  done  was  between 
Chicago  and  Calumet,  to  enable  the  Michigan  Cen- 
tral to  enter  Chicago.  The  main  line  between  Cairo 
and  La  Salle,  301  miles,  was  completed  January  8, 
1855.  Large  numbers  of  slaves  in  Kentucky 
promptly  showed  their  appreciation  of  the  advan- 
tages of  the  new  railroad  by  escaping  over  it. 

The  Galena  branch,  from  La  Salle  to  Dunleath, 
146  miles,  was  finished  June  12,  1855,  and  the  branch 
from  Chicago  to  the  junction  with  the  main  line,  249 
miles,  September  21,  1856.  Next  day  Chief  Engi- 
neer Mason  sent  a  despatch  to  the  board  of  directors 
announcing  that  his  task  of  building  705  miles  of 
railroad  was  finished.  Then  he  resigned.  Not  long 
afterward  he  was  elected  mayor  of  Chicago. 

One  year  later  the  company  was  obliged  to  assign. 
Richard  Cobden,  the  famous  British  statesman,  who 
had  almost  his  entire  fortune  invested  in  the  road, 
came  over,  and  by  his  advice  helped  the  board  of 
directors  to  get  the  company  on  its  feet  again.  By 
October  31,  1882,  the  seven  per  cent  of  the  gross  re- 
ceipts which  under  the  law  had  to  be  paid  to  the  State, 
had  yielded  $9,087,835,  or  more  than  enough  to  pay 
for  all  the  public  institutions  in  the  State.  This  rich 
and  ever-increasing  source  of  income  is  permanent, 
for  the  State  constitution  provides  that  the  law  can 
never  be  repealed.  In  the  long  run  Illinois  ventures 
in  railroad  hatching  turned  out  to  be  very  profitable. 

Chicago's  first  railroad  was  the  Galena  and  Chi- 
cago Union,  now  part  of  the  Chicago  and  North- 
western system,  which  was  chartered  January  16, 


198  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

1836,  by  Ebenezer  and  T.  W.  Smith,  real  estate  men, 
who  wanted  something  to  boom  their  holdings.     It 
was  then  an  open  question  whether  Galena  was  not 
destined  to  become  a  greater  city  than  Chicago. 

James  Seymour  began  the  survey,  February  19, 

1837,  at  the  foot  of  Dearborn  Street,  and  managed 
to  run  a  line  due  west  ten  miles  to  the  Desplaines 
River,  by  wading  waist-deep  in  cold  water  part  of 
the  way.     Next  year  some  piles  were  driven  along 
Madison   Street   and   stringers   placed   upon   them. 
But  it  was  a  difficult  matter  to  build  a  railroad  with- 
out money,  and  as  no  one  in  that  new  country  had 
any  money  worth  mentioning,  the  project  languished 
for  years.     Finally,  in  1845,  a  convention  made  up 
of  delegates  from  all  the  counties  through  which  the 
proposed  railroad  was  to  run  was  held  at  Rockford. 
A  further  struggle  of  nearly  two  years  followed  be- 
fore the  charter  could  be  amended  and  the  company 
reorganized,  when  it  was  found  that  a  New  Yorker 
named   Townsend   and   a    Springfield   man   named 
Mather  had  contrived  to  buy  up  practically  all  the 
stock  at  one  cent  on  the  dollar,  but  were  willing  to 
part  with  it  if  they  wTere  suitably  rewarded  for  their 
trouble.      The  company  was  finally  reorganized  in 
1847  with  William  B.  Ogden,  another  real  estate 
dealer,  as  president.     The  real  survey  was  begun  in 
September  of  that  year  by  Richard  P.  Morgan,  late 
of  the  Hudson  River  Railroad,  as  engineer-in-charge 
at  the  munificent  salary  of  $2.50  a  day. 

In  due  time  Mr.  Morgan  reported  to  the  directors 
that  the  distance  from  Chicago  to  Galena  by  the 
route  he  had  selected  was  182  miles,  and  that  the  road 
would  cost  $2,648,727,  or  $14,553  a  mile.  The  engi- 


II 

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II 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS        199 

neer  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  the  probable  earnings 
for  the  first  year  after  the  road  was  completed  would 
be  about  $393,000.  He  thought  50,000  passengers 
at  an  average  fare  of  $3  each  would  equal  all  of  the 
travel  from  every  source,  as  there  were  but  200,000 
people  in  all  the  country  to  be  traversed,  or  who  could 
use  the  road  when  built.  Still,  even  with  this  modest 
traffic,  the  engineer  was  of  the  opinion  that  the  net 
earnings  would  pay  dividends  of  8  per  cent. 

The  survey  progressed  so  rapidly  that  the  first 
seven  miles  west  of  Chicago  were  put  under  contract 
in  the  fall  of  1847.  Actual  grading,  however,  was 
not  begun  until  June,  1848,  near  what  is  now  the  cor- 
ner of  Kinzie  and  Halstead  Streets,  then  outside  the 
city  limits.  The  first  rails  laid  were  the  old  strap- 
iron  affairs,  which  were  purchased  solely  because  the 
Eastern  roads  were  taking  them  up  to  make  room 
for  the  more  modern  T  rails,  and  hence  would  be  glad 
to  sell  their  strap-rails  very  cheap.  Even  these  sec- 
ond-hand strap-rails  cost  $50  a  ton  on  board  the  boat 
at  Buffalo.  They  were  bought  on  credit  and  were  to 
be  paid  for  in  two  and  a  half  years. 

The  first  locomotive,  the  "  Pioneer,"  was  also  a 
second-hand  bargain,  bought  on  credit  from  the  Buf- 
falo and  Attica  Railroad,  which  was  furnishing  the 
strap-rails.  Being  the  first  locomotive  that  ever  ran 
west  of  Chicago,  the  Pioneer  deserves  more  than  pass- 
ing mention.  It  was  built  by  M.  W.  Baldwin,  the 
Philadelphia  watchmaker  whom  Fate  turned  from  his 
chosen  calling  to  found  the  world's  greatest  locomo- 
tive works.  It  had  cylinders  ten  by  eighteen  inches, 
a  single  pair  of  driving  wheels  four  and  a  half  feet  in 
diameter,  and  weighed  ten  tons.  After  long  service  it 


£00  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

was  retired.  It  was  exhibited  at  the  World's  Colum- 
bian Exposition  at  Chicago  in  1893  in  charge  of  John 
Ebbert,  its  first  engineer,  who  ran  it  for  many  years, 
and  was  also  exhibited  at  the  Louisiana  Purchase 
Exposition  at  St.  Louis  in  1904.  It  can  now  be  seen 
at  the  Field  Museum  in  Chicago.  The  Pioneer  ar- 
rived at  Chicago  on  the  brig  Buffalo  October  10, 
1848,  and  was  unloaded  next  day,  which  was  Sunday. 
October  31  a  hundred  persons,  including  the  stock- 
holders and  newspaper  men,  were  invited  to  make  a 
trip  over  the  entire  system  of  ten  miles.  All  the  com- 
pany's rolling-stock,  consisting  of  one  locomotive  and 
six  box  cars,  was  turned  out  in  honor  of  the  great 
event. 

On  the  return  trip  a  load  of  wheat  was  transferred 
from  a  farmer's  wagon  to  one  of  the  cars,  and  hauled 
in  triumph  back  to  town.  This  was  the  first  ship- 
ment of  wheat  by  rail  into  Chicago.  The  event  made 
a  great  sensation.  The  farmers  were  eager  to  expe- 
rience the  novelty  of  shipping  wheat  by  rail,  and  the 
company  was  quick  to  take  advantage  of  the  situ- 
ation. 

One  week  later  the  city  was  electrified  by  the  an- 
nouncement that  as  much  as  thirty  loads  of  wheat 
were  awaiting  purchasers  at  the  Desplaines  Station. 
To  boom  the  passenger  traffic  the  railroad  manage- 
ment announced  that  wheat  buyers  would  have  to  go 
to  Desplaines  instead  of  awaiting  the  arrival  of  grain 
at  the  foot  of  Randolph  Street  Bridge. 

The  first  railroad  depot  in  Chicago  was  a  one-story 
wooden  affair  built  by  the  Chicago  and  Galena  Union 
Railroad,  near  the  junction  of  the  present  Canal  and 
Kinzie  Streets,  in  the  fall  of  1848.  In  the  following 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS        201 

year  the  building  was  enlarged  and  a  portion  of  it  was 
set  aside  for  freight,  while  the  east  end  was  used  for 
passengers.  A  second  story,  surmounted  by  an  ob- 
servatory, was  added  for  the  general  offices.  Here 
President  John  B.  Turner  and  his  associates  planned 
the  extension  of  the  road  and  controlled  its  destinies. 
President  Turner  occasionally  left  his  more  pressing 
duties  to  ascend  to  the  observatory,  where  with  an 
old-fashioned  marine  telescope  he  swept  the  open 
prairies  that  extended  from  his  office  to  the  horizon 
watching  for  the  first  signs  of  smoke  from  his  ap- 
proaching trains.  On  clear  days  the  smoke  could  be 
seen  when  the  trains  were  six  miles  distant.  The  use 
of  the  telegraph  was  not  yet  dreamed  of  on  any  West- 
ern road. 

In  August,  1853,  the  road,  for  the  construction 
of  which  the  president  and  directors  had  had  to  bor- 
row money  on  their  individual  credit,  paid  a  dividend 
of  eleven  per  cent,  and  six  months  later  another  of 
ten.  September  4,  1853,  the  road  was  opened  for 
traffic  to  Freeport,  131  miles  from  Chicago.  Two 
passenger  and  three  freight  trains  each  way  daily 
were  required  to  care  for  the  traffic. 

This  heavy  traffic  necessitated  something  better 
than  a  marine  telescope  and  time  card  rules  for  hand- 
ling it,  so  the  company  in  1854  installed  a  telegraph 
line  and  used  it  for  the  operation  of  its  trains.  This 
was  the  first  use  of  the  telegraph  for  the  movement 
of  trains  in  the  West.  In  the  same  year  the  com- 
pany bought  two  locomotives  adapted  to  burning  soft 
coal  with  the  stipulation  that  they  were  not  to  be  paid 
for  unless  they  were  "  successful  with  Illinois  soft 
coal."  Prior  to  this  experiment  all  Western  loco- 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

motives  burned  wood  exclusively  at  an  average  cost 
of  $2.13  a  cord. 

The  prosperity  of  the  pioneer  line  was  of  short 
duration.  The  great  panic  of  1857  not  only  put  a 
stop  to  railroad  building,  but  it  also  cut  off  dividends 
and  very  seriously  crippled  all  Western  roads.  The 
Galena  and  Chicago  Union  was  obliged  to  reduce  its 
working  force  from  1,904  in  August,  1857,  to  722  in 
January,  1858.  The  same  panic  put  a  summary  end 
to  work  on  the  Chicago,  St.  Paul  and  Fond  du  Lac 
Railroad,  organized  to  build  to  St.  Paul  and  the  cop- 
per regions  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Superior,  with  the 
result  that  the  company  was  absorbed  by  the  Chicago 
and  Northwestern  Railroad  Company,  organized 
June  6,  1859.  Although  this  company  was  so  des- 
perately poor  that  for  some  time  it  could  not  pay  in- 
terest on  its  bonds,  and  the  officers  had  to  make  up 
part  of  the  pay-rolls  out  of  their  own  pockets,  it  con- 
trived to  absorb  the  545  miles  of  owned  and  leased 
lines  of  the  Galena  and  Chicago  Union  in  1864,  when 
it  owned  but  350  miles  of  its  own.  The  consolidation 
was  a  nine  days'  wonder  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Missouri  River. 

The  period  of  active  railroad  construction  in  the 
Central  West  began  in  1851.  First  of  all  the  rail- 
road contractors  to  attract  the  world's  attention  by 
the  miracles  they  wrought  in  rapid  construction  were 
Sheffield  and  Farnam,  who  took  the  contract  to  build 
the  Chicago  and  Rock  Island,  now  a  part  of  the  Chi- 
cago, Rock  Island  and  Pacific  Railway. 

Beginning  at  Chicago,  April  10,  1852,  the  road 
was  opened  to  Rock  Island,  181  miles,  February  22, 
1854.  The  road,  the  first  from  the  Great  Lakes  to 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  203 

the  Mississippi,  was  turned  over  to  the  company  July 
10,  1854,  a  year  and  a  half  before  the  date  specified  in 
the  contract. 

The  internal  improvement  mania  seems  to  have 
broken  out  spontaneously  all  over  the  West  about  the 
same  time.  While  the  people  of  Illinois  were  com- 
mitting themselves  to  extravagant  and  impracticable 
plans  for  railroads  and  canals,  Indiana,  which  was 
no  better  able  to  pay  the  bills  than  her  neighbors, 
planned  a  ten-million-dollar  system  of  railroads. 

In  1833,  when  the  Territory  of  Michigan  had  a 
population  of  only  thirty-five  thousand,  the  Erie  and 
Kalamazoo  Railroad,  the  first  fragment  of  which 
ultimately  became  a  part  of  the  Lake  Shore  system, 
was  chartered  to  build  from  Toledo  to  the  head- 
waters of  the  Kalamazoo  River.  At  the  same  time 
the  Detroit  and  St.  Joseph  Railroad,  which  in  the 
process  of  evolution  became  a  part  of  the  Michigan 
Central,  another  Vanderbilt  line,  was  also  chartered 
to  build  from  Detroit  to  St.  Joseph  on  Lake  Mich- 
igan. Before  these  two  roads  entered  upon  the 
placid  prosperity  of  a  common  management  they 
were  pitted  against  each  other  in  a  long  and  spectac- 
ular contest  for  supremacy. 

Not  having  capital  or  the  means  of  obtaining  it, 
the  Detroit  and  St.  Joseph  could  not  be  completed. 
In  1836  the  State  government  determined  to  take 
over  the  property,  finish  it,  and  name  it  the  Central 
Railroad.  By  an  act  approved  March  24,  1837,  the 
internal  improvement  program  was  expanded  to  in- 
clude three  railroads  across  the  southern  end  of  the 
southern  peninsula,  where  all  the  scanty  population 
of  the  State  was  gathered.  The  law  authorized  a 


204  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

loan  of  five  million  dollars  to  finance  the  undertaking. 
Governor  S.  T.  Mason  and  Theodore  Romeyn  were 
appointed  a  committee  to  negotiate  the  loan.  Mason 
was  honest,  but  a  poor  business  man.  The  sequel 
seems  to  indicate  that  Romeyn,  also,  was  no  match 
for  Wall  Street  financiers. 

After  considerable  difficulty  the  commissioners 
sold  the  bonds  to  the  Morris  Canal  and  Banking 
Company,  of  New  Jersey,  on  most  unfavorable 
terms.  The  Banking  Company  paid  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars  in  its  own  paper  on  account,  and, 
after  taking  the  precaution  to  sell  the  Michigan  bonds 
in  Europe,  failed.  The  State  of  Michigan  was  thus 
saddled  with  a  debt  of  five  million  dollars,  for  which 
it  had  received  no  value  whatever.  The  affair  came 
near  bankrupting  the  new  State,  and  earned  for  it  the 
odium  of  a  repudiator;  for  the  taxpayers  were  not 
willing  to  redeem  bonds  for  which  they  had  never 
received  an  equivalent. 

After  this  disastrous  experience  the  State  was  not 
in  a  position  to  build  railroads.  Nothing  whatever 
was  done  on  the  northern  line.  In  the  course  of  eight 
years  the  Central  was  completed  to  Kalamazoo.  The 
Southern  road,  now  a  part  of  the  Lake  Shore  system, 
was  finished  to  Hillsdale,  sixty-seven  miles  from 
Monroe,  in  October,  1843,  at  a  cost  of  one  million 
four  hundred  thousand  dollars.  It  was  the  usual 
flimsy  wooden  structure  with  strap-rails.  The  State 
charged  twelve  cents  a  bushel  to  haul  wheat  from 
Hillsdale  to  Monroe  in  cars  that  held  a  hundred 
bushels,  provided  the  grain  was  in  bags.  The  ware- 
housemen got  three  cents  a  bushel  for  storing  and 
shipping,  one  cent  for  buying,  and  another  three 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS        205 

cents  for  storing  at  Monroe,  making  a  total  of  nine- 
teen cents  for  moving  the  grain  from  the  farmer's 
wagon  at  Hillsdale  to  the  vessel  at  Monroe,  sixty- 
seven  miles  away. 

In  1845,  James  F.  Joy,  a  young  lawyer  of  Detroit, 
in  the  absence  of  clients,  devoted  a  portion  of  his 
superabundant  leisure  to  writing  letters  to  the  local 
papers  advocating  the  sale  of  the  State  railroads  to 
private  corporations.  A  paper  containing  one  of 
these  letters  by  the  merest  chance  fell  into  the  hands 
of  John  W.  Brooks,  superintendent  of  the  Syracuse 
and  Rochester  Railroad.  Brooks  was  only  twenty- 
seven,  and  he  was  burning  to  get  into  something  big; 
so  he  hurried  off  to  Detroit,  where  he  and  young  Joy 
quickly  agreed  to  pool  their  capital  of  nothing  apiece 
and  buy  one  of  the  State  railroads.  Joy  was  to  draw 
up  the  charter  and  inveigle  the  legislature  into  selling 
out,  while  Brooks  went  to  Boston  to  try  to  raise  some 
capital  with  which  to  put  their  prospective  purchase 
in  operating  condition. 

Local  jealousies  made  so  much  trouble  for  Joy  that 
he  was  barely  able  to  squeeze  his  measure  through  the 
legislature  on  the  last  day  of  the  session.  But  the 
State  was  bankrupt  and  simply  had  to  get  rid  of  the 
railroads,  even  if  no  cash  was  received  for  them. 
And  of  course  no  one  would  think  of  disbursing  real 
money  for  railroads  when  they  could  be  paid  for  in 
State  bonds  obtainable  at  almost  any  price  from  four- 
teen cents  on  the  dollar  up,  but  which  the  State  was 
obliged  to  accept  at  par.  The  Central  road  was  sold 
to  Brooks  and  Joy  for  two  million  dollars.  The 
Southern  road  went  to  E.  C.  Litchfield,  of  Detroit, 
and  John  Stryker,  of  Rome,  N.  Y.,  for  five  hundred 


206  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

thousand  dollars,  payable  in  ten  years  on  the  instal- 
ment plan. 

Getting  capitalists  to  invest  was  more  difficult  than 
overcoming  local  prejudices  in  Michigan;  but  at  last 
the  Central  was  organized  with  John  M.  Forbes,  a 
New  York  tea  merchant,  who  had  made  a  fortune 
in  Hong  Kong,  as  president.  Then  Brooks  returned 
to  Michigan  as  general  superintendent,  and  in  two 
years  had  the  line  completed  and  in  operation  to  New 
Buffalo,  on  the  eastern  shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  from 
whence  steamers  plied  to  Chicago,  then  a  town  of  ten 
thousand  inhabitants,  situated  in  a  quagmire. 

As  the  rails  approached  New  Buffalo  it  dawned 
upon  Joy  and  Brooks  that  the  water  route  would 
never  do,  but  that  they  would  have  to  lay  their  rails 
into  Chicago.  The  only  difficulty  was  that  they 
could  get  no  charter  to  build  through  Indiana.  A 
railroad  had  been  chartered  by  the  Indiana  legisla- 
ture in  1835  to  build  from  La  Porte  to  Michigan 
City.  This  project  for  a  railroad  twelve  miles  long 
was  designated  as  the  "  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Rail- 
road Company  "  when  it  was  brought  before  the  leg- 
islature ;  but  this  grandiloquent  title  aroused  so  much 
ridicule  that  its  sponsor  contracted  it  to  the  "  Buffalo 
and  Mississippi."  As  he  would  not  yield  another 
mile,  the  road  was  finally  incorporated  under  that 
title. 

A  beginning  was  made  at  La  Porte  June  14,  1837, 
with  the  customary  celebration,  and  a  mile  of  the  road 
was  partly  graded.  The  panic  and  the  epidemic  of 
1838  killed  the  Buffalo  and  Mississippi  so  dead  that 
for  ten  years  even  the  formality  of  an  annual  election 
was  not  observed.  In  October,  1847,  W.  B.  Ogden, 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  207 

who,  in  default  of  a  successor,  still  regarded  himself 
as  president,  called  a  meeting  of  stockholders  to  re- 
vive the  project.  One  man,  the  holder  of  two  shares, 
responded  to  the  call.  Two  years  later,  when  there 
were  indications  that  the  franchise  was  about  to  be- 
come valuable,  the  company  was  at  last  reorganized 
under  the  name  of  the  Northern  Indiana  Railroad. 

Meanwhile  Joy  had  arranged  in  1848  to  buy  the 
charter  for  fifty  thousand  dollars.  Brooks  was  de- 
lighted. He  wrote  a  letter  to  Joy  in  which  he  for- 
mally commended  the  purchase  and  ventured  the  ex- 
travagant prediction  that  in  twenty  years  Chicago 
would  have  two  hundred  thousand  inhabitants. 

Armed  with  this  letter,  Joy  went  to  New  York  to 
secure  the  ratification  of  his  great  bargain.  Every- 
thing went  off  beautifully  until  the  directors  read 
Brooks's  prediction  about  the  two  hundred  thousand 
inhabitants  in  Chicago  in  1868.  In  great  disgust 
they  declared  that  any  man  who  could  make  such  pre- 
posterous prophecies  was  so  obviously  lacking  in  com- 
mon sense  that  they  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
anything  he  proposed.  The  charter  deal  was  re- 
pudiated. 

The  Southern  road,  which  up  to  that  time  had  been 
in  a  bad  way,  and  could  have  been  bought  cheap  by 
the  Central,  snapped  up  the  charter  which  the  Cen- 
tral's board  of  directors  had  rejected  as  worthless, 
and  began  laying  track  from  White  Pigeon  through 
Elkhart  toward  Chicago. 

To  retrieve  this  lost  opportunity  Joy  hurried  to 
Indianapolis  to  try  to  obtain  a  charter  from  the  leg- 
islature. The  Southern  road,  which  wanted  to  mo- 
nopolize the  Chicago  business,  blocked  his  efforts. 


208  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

He  retaliated  by  introducing  a  bill  in  the  Michigan 
legislature  to  forfeit  the  Southern's  charter  because 
its  terms  had  not  been  fulfilled.  The  Southern 
called  on  the  northern  Indiana  towns  for  help,  and 
engaged  Schuyler  Coif  ax,  afterwards  vice-president 
of  the  United  States,  to  manage  its  campaign.  Then 
ensued  one  of  the  hottest  fights  in  the  history  of  rail- 
road lobbying.  It  ended  in  an  agreement  that  both 
sides  should  leave  Indianapolis. 

Joy  observed  the  treaty  faithfully,  but  found  time 
before  leaving  to  slyly  lay  the  wires  for  amending 
the  charter  of  a  north  and  south  line  in  Indiana  to 
enable  the  company  to  build  branches  from  points  on 
the  main  line  before  the  main  line  itself  was  com- 
pleted. For  a  suitable  consideration  the  Indiana 
company  was  to  build  a  "  branch  "  that  would  enable 
the  Michigan  Central  to  cross  the  State  and  then 
lease  the  "  branch  "  in  perpetuity  to  the  latter  road. 
Joy  again  went  to  New  York  with  a  charter  that 
would  open  the  way  to  Chicago,  but  the  directors  re- 
fused to  believe  it  would  answer  the  purpose  until 
Judge  Benjamin  R.  Curtis,  of  Massachusetts,  who, 
as  justice  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  after- 
ward wrote  the  dissenting  opinion  in  the  famous 
Dred  Scott  case,  assured  them  that  it  was  all  right. 
Then  the  directors  paid  half  a  million  dollars  for  a 
privilege  that  Joy  had  tried  a  short  time  before  to  get 
them  to  buy  for  one-tenth  of  that  sum. 

Joy  then  went  to  Illinois  to  get  a  charter  that 
would  enable  the  Central  to  build  from  the  Indiana 
line  to  Chicago.  He  employed  Abraham  Lincoln,  a 
rising  lawyer  of  Springfield,  to  get  the  measure 
through  the  legislature;  but  Lincoln  was  not  a  good 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  209 

corporation  lobbyist,  and  he  failed.  The  difficulty 
was  finally  solved  after  a  sharp  struggle  by  divert- 
ing the  route  of  the  Illinois  Central  to  the  Indiana 
line  so  the  Michigan  Central  could  get  into  Chicago 
over  it. 

Under  its  new  management  the  Southern  road  had 
been  making  haste  slowly.  Upon  taking  possession 
in  1846  the  first  act  of  the  new  board  of  directors  was 
to  decide  that  no  more  credit  should  be  allowed  for 
freight  charges  or  passage,  which  would  seem  to  indi- 
cate that  the  former  management  had  been  more 
easy-going  than  is  usual  at  the  present  time.  At  the 
same  meeting  the  directors  elected  two  conductors,  or 
"  captains  of  trains,"  at  salaries  of  forty  dollars  a 
month,  thus  manifesting  an  attention  to  detail  which 
is  not  kept  up  under  the  present  management.  Little 
further  was  done  until  August  1,  1849,  when  a  per- 
petual lease  of  the  Erie  and  Kalamazoo  was  secured. 
This  road  had  had  a  stormy  and  uncertain  existence, 
managed  part  of  the  time  by  a  commission  repre- 
senting the  board  of  directors  and  part  of  the  time 
by  a  receiver  appointed  by  the  court,  and  still  an- 
other part  of  the  time  by  both  together,  until  it  was 
finally  sold  under  accumulated  judgments  to  Wash- 
ington Hunt,  of  Lockport,  N.  Y.,  and  George  Bliss, 
of  Massachusetts,  who  seized  the  first  opportunity  to 
get  rid  of  it. 

When  the  Southern  secured  control  of  the  North- 
ern Indiana  a  great  construction  race  with  the  Cen- 
tral ensued.  It  was  won  by  the  Southern,  which  ran 
its  first  train  into  Chicago  February  20,  1852.  The 
first  train  over  the  Central  did  not  reach  Chicago  until 
May  21  of  the  same  year.  Two  years  later  it  was 


210  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

possible  to  make  the  journey  from  New  York  to  Chi- 
cago in  thirty-six  hours,  or  exactly  the  time  now  re- 
quired for  the  round  trip  by  the  fastest  trains. 

While  straining  every  nerve  to  get  into  Chicago, 
the  Central  underwent  a  singular  experience  in  Mich- 
igan, an  inheritance  resulting  from  State  manage- 
ment, that  for  a  time  threatened  disaster. 

Under  political  management  the  railroad  officials 
were  especially  considerate  of  the  sensibilities  of  the 
voter,  just  as  the  State  railroad  management  in  Penn- 
sylvania had  been.  If  a  hog  or  a  cow  chanced  to 
be  killed  by  a  train  on  the  State  lines,  settlement  was 
promptly  made  for  about  three  times  the  value  of  the 
animal.  The  farmers  along  the  road  were  not  slow 
to  perceive  the  advantages  of  the  home  market  which 
Providence  had  thus  brought  to  their  doors.  They 
began  feeding  their  old,  decrepit,  and  diseased  stock 
on  the  railroad  track,  where  it  would  stand  a  good 
chance  to  meet  an  untimely  but  profitable  fate. 

The  business  acumen  of  the  farmers  was  robbed 
of  its  just  return  to  some  extent  by  the  caution  of  the 
railroad  men.  In  those  days  of  strap-rails  and  light 
equipment  the  little  locomotives  and  cars  were  pretty 
certain  to  fare  badly  in  any  encounter  with  a  cow  or 
even  with  a  hog.  So  while  the  engineers  may  not 
have  had  any  compunctions  about  killing  the  trouble- 
some stock,  they  had  a  wholesome  regard  for  their 
own  safety,  which  prevented  them  from  taking  un- 
necessary chances.  In  spite  of  all  precautions, 
though,  a  good  deal  of  stock  was  killed. 

When  T  rails  and  larger  engines  were  introduced 
under  private  management,  the  slaughter  of  stock, 
long  accustomed  to  yarding  on  the  track,  was  appall- 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  211 

ing.  At  first  the  company  attempted  to  pay  a  fair 
valuation  for  stock  killed  by  its  trains;  but  upon  in- 
vestigating the  causes  of  such  extraordinary  mor- 
tality, fenced  the  track  and  announced  that  thereafter 
only  one-half  the  value  of  any  animal  killed  while 
trespassing  upon  the  company's  property  would  be 
paid. 

The  farmers  showed  their  resentment  of  this  un- 
generous attitude  of  the  railroad  company  by  start- 
ing a  systematic  campaign  of  petty  annoyances  which 
in  the  aggregate  became  serious.  Stations  and  all 
other  accessible  property  were  damaged,  journal 
boxes  were  filled  with  sand  so  they  would  heat  and 
delay  trains,  switches  were  tampered  with,  and  the 
rails  were  frequently  greased  for  long  distances.  This 
always  brought  trains  to  a  standstill  until  the  train- 
men got  off  and  sanded  the  greased  rails. 

This  soon  became  too  tame  for  the  farmers,  who 
began  placing  obstructions  on  the  track.  Matters 
reached  such  a  pass  that  a  hand-car  had  to  be  sent  out 
just  ahead  of  every  train  to  remove  ties  and  logs  and 
old  strap-rails  placed  on  the  track  by  would-be 
wreckers.  If  the  hand-car  got  too  far  in  the  lead  the 
lurking  miscreants  would  dodge  in  behind  it  and 
place  fresh  obstructions  on  the  track  before  the  train 
came  along. 

Next,  trains  were  stoned  as  they  passed  through 
the  woods  at  night,  and  finally  volleys  were  fired  at 
them  repeatedly.  It  became  a  matter  of  common 
report  that  the  enemies  of  the  road  had  sworn  to  kill 
some  passengers.  Naturally  enough,  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, passenger  traffic  ceased  almost  entirely. 
Even  some  of  the  engine  and  train  men  quit  the  road 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

rather  than  take  further  risks  of  being  shot  from 
ambush  or  killed  in  a  wreck. 

With  ruin  staring  it  in  the  face  unless  this  baseless 
persecution  could  be  stopped,  the  railroad  company 
engaged  a  corps  of  amateur  detectives  in  October, 

1850,  to  secure  evidence  against  the  ringleaders.     It 
did  not  take  long  for  the  detectives  to  ascertain  that 
the  chief  trouble  makers  were  Abel  F.  Fitch,  a  lead- 
ing  citizen   of   Michigan   Centre,   who   cherished   a 
grudge  against  the  railroad  company  because  he  had 
been  unsuccessful  in  getting  a  contract,  and  Amos 
Filley,  the  keeper  of  a  tough  saloon.     These  two  had 
taken  advantage  of  the  hostility  of  the  farmers  to 
square  accounts  with  the  railroad  for  their  own  griev- 
ances. 

The  detectives  ingratiated  themselves  into  the  con- 
fidence of  the  conspirators  so  completely  that  one  of 
them  was  actually  selected  to  set  fire  to  the  depot  at 
Niles.  He  carried  out  this  duty  conscientiously  after 
he  had  secretly  notified  the  company  to  have  men 
handy  to  put  out  the  fire.  By  the  end  of  March, 

1851,  the  detectives  announced  that  they  had  all  the 
evidence  needed  for  conviction  of  the  chief  conspira- 
tors. 

A  special  train  carrying  some  seventy-five  detect- 
ives and  deputy  sheriffs  was  sent  to  Michigan  Centre 
on  the  night  of  April  10,  1851.  Divided  into  squads, 
this  large  force  made  a  swift  and  stealthy  round-up 
of  the  town  and  its  vicinity.  The  raid  was  a  com- 
plete success.  One  after  another  thirty-six  prisoners 
were  brought  in,  the  majority  of  whom  made  damag- 
ing admissions  to  save  themselves  under  the  impres- 
sion that  full  confessions  had  already  been  made  by 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  213 

the  leaders.  On  returning  to  Detroit,  Henry  Gay, 
a  member  of  the  gang  who  had  burned  the  new  freight 
depot  at  that  point  five  months  before,  was  arrested. 

This  remarkable  raid  and  the  ensuing  trial,  which 
lasted  from  the  first  of  May  to  the  end  of  September, 
created  a  tremendous  sensation  throughout  the  State. 
Although  W.  H.  Seward,  ex-Governor  of  New  York, 
was  engaged  to  lead  the  defense,  twelve  of  the  gang 
were  convicted  and  sentenced  to  the  penitentiary, 
from  which  they  were  soon  pardoned,  while  two  others 
died  in  jail  before  the  trial  was  ended. 

In  April,  1855,  the  Michigan  Southern  and  North- 
ern Indiana  were  consolidated.  Soon  after  a  divi- 
dend of  ten  per  cent  was  declared,  and  for  a  time 
the  company  was  very  prosperous  and  aggressive, 
building  branches  and  improving  equipment.  But 
there  was  such  a  thing  as  being  too  enterprising,  as 
the  Southern  found  out  when  the  crash  of  1857 
caught  it  with  a  heavy  floating  debt.  Then  its  for- 
tunes underwent  an  eclipse  so  total  that  the  board  of 
directors  had  to  borrow  chairs  to  hold  a  meeting,  the 
sheriff  having  seized  every  stick  of  furniture  for 
debts. 

Meanwhile  the  other  component  parts  of  the  pres- 
ent Lake  Shore  system  had  come  into  existence  and 
were  slowly  gravitating  toward  the  inevitable  consol- 
idation. Nehemiah  Allen,  a  Quaker,  was  the  first  to 
propose  a  railroad  along  the  shore  of  Lake  Erie.  But 
the  idea  of  a  railroad  presuming  to  compete  with  the 
large,  luxurious,  and  swift  steamers  plying  between 
Buffalo,  Cleveland,  and  Detroit  seemed  so  prepos- 
terous that  he  was  regarded  as  a  crank*  No  move 
was  made  to  build  a  road  east  of  Cleveland  until  July 


214  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

4,  1849,  when  books  were  opened  for  subscriptions 
for  the  stock  of  the  Painesville,  Ashtabula  and  Gen- 
eva Railroad,  which  was  opened  for  traffic  November 
20,  1852.  In  spite  of  all  predictions  that  a  railroad 
could  never  compete  with  the  lake,  this  road  paid 
dividends  of  five  to  ten  per  cent  every  six  months  for 
the  next  twenty  years.  A  small  stock  investment  re- 
luctantly made  by  the  city  of  Cleveland  formed  the 
principal  part  of  that  city's  famous  sinking  fund. 

The  building  of  this  road  completed  a  rail  route  to 
Buffalo  one  hundred  and  eighty-three  miles  to  the 
east ;  but  right  in  the  middle  was  the  Erie  and  North- 
east Railroad  of  six-foot  gauge,  twenty  miles  long. 
This  necessitated  two  transfers  of  passengers  and 
freight  at  Erie  and  at  State  Line,  the  termini  of  the 
broad-gauge  road.  This  was  an  intolerable  condi- 
tion of  affairs,  yet  business  was  actually  done  that 
way  for  a  year.  As  traffic  increased  the  double 
transfer  grew  too  burdensome  to  be  endured;  so  on 
November  16,  1853,  a  contract  was  signed  to  change 
this  twenty  miles  of  track  to  standard  gauge,  so  that 
trains  could  be  run  through  between  Cleveland  and 
Buffalo. 

This  seemed  to  be  the  logical,  if  not  the  inevitable, 
thing  to  do ;  but,  strangely  enough,  the  people  of  Erie 
resented  this  as  an  invasion  of  their  personal  and 
private  rights,  which  they  determined  to  resist.  They 
announced  that  they  would  prevent  the  change  of 
gauge  at  all  costs.  The  result  was  an  episode  which 
was  certainly  unique. 

In  1846  the  Erie  and  Northeast  Railroad  was  or- 
ganized in  Erie  to  build  a  railroad  to  the  New 
York  State  line,  where  connection  was  to  be 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  215 

made  with  the  lines  of  two  companies  organ- 
ized in  New  York  State:  the  Dunkirk  and  State 
Line,  which  proposed  to  build  from  Dunkirk,  which 
was  to  be  the  terminus  of  the  Erie,  to  the  State  line, 
and  the  Buffalo  and  State  Line,  which  was  to  build 
from  Buffalo,  the  western  terminus  of  the  series  of 
little  roads  forming  a  route  across  New  York,  to  the 
State  line.  As  the  Erie  was  a  broad-gauge  road,  the 
people  of  Erie  hoped  to  get  a  through  route  to  New 
York  City  by  building  their  road  of  the  same  gauge. 
But  as  it  would  obviously  be  unprofitable  to  build 
parallel  competing  lines,  the  two  New  York  compa- 
nies got  together  and  agreed  to  build  but  one  line, 
which  was  to  be  of  standard  gauge. 

The  transfer  of  baggage,  mail,  express,  freight, 
and  passengers  necessitated  by  the  different  gauges 
of  the  Erie  and  Northeast  and  its  connections  was 
extremely  profitable  to  the  hotels,  omnibuses,  and 
draymen  of  Erie.  They  feared  if  through  trains 
were  run  their  town  would  become  a  "  Helmit  by  the 
Wayside,"  as  the  local  orators  expressed  it.  At- 
tempts to  intimidate  the  railroad  by  revoking  its  right 
to  lay  tracks  through  the  streets  or  to  cajole  it  by 
proffers  of  municipal  assistance  in  laying  a  track  to 
the  dock  proving  equally  unavailing,  Mayor  Alfred 
King  called  a  public  meeting  on  July  19,  1853,  to 
devise  means  to  prevent  the  change  of  gauge  which 
had  been  determined  upon  by  the  Erie  and  Northeast 
management  on  the  preceding  day.  The  whole  pop- 
ulation of  the  town  in  response  to  the  call  assembled 
in  the  park,  where  excited  orators  delivered  inflam- 
matory harangues  urging  the  people  to  resort  to  arms 
if  necessary  to  prevent  the  railroad  company  from 


216  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

adapting  its  property  to  the  requirements  of  its  rap- 
idly growing  traffic. 

Immediately  afterward  the  town  council  met  and 
passed  an  ordinance  forbidding  the  company  to 
change  the  gauge  of  its  tracks  under  severe  penalties. 
A  continuous  series  of  ordinances  and  resolutions  by 
the  town  council  and  daily  meetings  at  which  the 
speeches  grew  more  and  more  incendiary,  wrought  the 
town  into  a  frenzy. 

Accordingly  when  Erie  was  alarmed  early  on  the 
morning  of  December  7,  1853,  by  the  violent  ringing 
of  the  courthouse  bell,  practically  every  able-bodied 
man  in  the  place  rushed  to  the  courthouse  square. 
Upon  learning  that  a  force  was  actually  at  work 
changing  the  gauge,  a  procession  led  by  Mayor  King 
marched  to  the  railroad,  drove  away  the  construction 
gang  with  a  shower  of  stones  and  rotten  eggs,  and 
tore  up  the  track.  A  similar  mob  at  Harbor  Creek, 
seven  miles  east,  tore  up  the  track  at  that  point. 
Guards  were  posted  to  prevent  the  track  from  being 
relaid. 

This  made  a  gap  of  seven  miles,  across  which  all 
passengers  and  baggage  had  to  be  transferred 
through  deep  snow  in  bitterly  cold  weather.  This 
seven-mile  march  came  to  be  known  as  "  Crossing  the 
Isthmus."  Many  passengers  had  feet,  hands,  and 
faces  frostbitten  in  crossing  the  Isthmus.  Women 
and  children  in  particular  suffered  severely. 

Freight  traffic  was  almost  entirely  suspended.  The 
result  of  all  these  unnecessary  hardships  was  to  arouse 
the  bitter  hostility  of  the  traveling  public  and  ship- 
pers. Erie  soon  found  herself  without  a  friend. 
Loud  appeals  were  made  by  the  people  of  other  sec- 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS  217 

tions  to  the  Federal  Government  to  put  an  end  to 
the  outlawry  at  Erie  and  thus  raise  the  embargo  on 
commerce,  while  the  railroad  company  sought  re- 
dress in  the  courts. 

When  a  United  States  marshal  attempted  to  serve 
an  injunction  on  the  leaders  of  the  mob,  the  document 
was  trampled  under  foot  in  token  of  contempt  of  the 
courts,  and  the  marshal  and  his  deputies  were  impris- 
oned. Five  separate  attempts  by  the  railroad  com- 
pany to  relay  its  tracks  and  resume  traffic  were 
thwarted  by  the  mob,  which  came  to  be  known  as 
the  "  Rippers  "  in  recognition  of  its  prowess  in  rip- 
ping up  track.  The  small  minority  who  believed  the 
railroad  had  a  right  to  manage  its  own  affairs  in  its 
own  way  were  derisively  dubbed  "  Shanghais." 

On  one  occasion  the  Rippers  attempted  to  capture 
a  train,  but  were  thwarted  by  the  quick-witted  engi- 
neer, who  began  backing  toward  the  New  York  line. 
The  Rippers  were  so  disconcerted  by  this  unexpected 
move  that  they  all  tumbled  off  into  the  snowdrifts 
the  best  way  they  could,  with  the  exception  of  Old 
Bill  Cooper,  their  leader.  Old  Bill,  being  afraid  to 
jump,  was  taken  captive  by  the  trainmen,  who  took 
him  some  distance  beyond  the  State  line,  then  dele- 
gated the  most  muscular  one  of  their  number  to  lock 
him  every  step  of  the  way  back  into  Pennsylvania. 

With  a  total  lack  of  humor,  Major  Fitch,  the  poet 
laureate  of  the  Rippers,  made  the  kicking  of  Old  Bill 
Cooper  the  subject  of  a  stirring  ballad,  which  did  not 
a  little  to  keep  the  martial  spirit  of  the  Rippers  alive. 

Finally  Governor  Bigler,  of  Pennsylvania,  went  to 
Erie  and  persuaded  the  people  to  permit  the  railroad 
company  to  relay  its  tracks  and  resume  traffic  on 


218  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

February  1,  1854,  when  the  first  train  ran  through 
from  Buffalo  to  Cleveland.  This  truce,  however,  did 
not  end  the  strange  Erie  war.  An  incredible  bitter- 
ness and  animosity  had  been  engendered,  which  de- 
moralized business,  disrupted  churches,  and  led  to 
frequent  assaults.  At  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night 
the  courthouse  bell  called  the  citizens  together  to 
listen  to  harangues  which  grew  ever  more  incendiary. 

Matters  finally  reached  such  a  pass  that  martial 
law  was  required  to  restore  order.  Discussion  of  the 
railroad  question  was  forbidden  under  severe  penal- 
ties, and  special  constables  wrere  appointed  to  enforce 
this  ordinance.  More  than  a  year  after  traffic  was 
resumed  a  mob  summoned  by  the  courthouse  bell 
tore  up  the  railroad  track  and  burned  the  bridges  in 
Erie.  After  that  the  railroad  was  disturbed  no  more, 
but  the  ill-feeling  engendered  by  the  episode  only 
died  out  with  the  generation  involved  in  it. 

After  the  war  was  ended  the  career  of  the  Erie  and 
Northeast  \vas  prosaic  enough.  It  was  consolidated 
with  the  Buffalo  and  State  Line  to  form  the  Buffalo 
and  Erie  on  May  15,  1867,  and  on  June  22,  1869,  by 
another  consolidation  with  the  Cleveland,  Painesville 
and  Ashtabula,  the  Cleveland  and  Toledo,  and  the 
Michigan  Southern,  and  Northern  Indiana,  each  of 
the  companies  being  a  consolidation  of  two  smaller 
roads,  became  a  part  of  the  Lake  Shore  and  Michigan 
Southern. 

Ohio  was  in  an  even  greater  hurry  than  Illinois  to 
acquire  a  railroad  system.  The  people  of  Sandusky 
held  a  meeting  in  1825  to  plan  a  railroad  to  Dayton. 
This  was  a  year  before  a  charter  was  issued  to  the 
Mohawk  and  Hudson,  the  first  link  in  the  chain  that 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS        219 

afterward  became  the  New  York  Central.  But  the 
scattered  settlers  in  the  woods  had  not  then  learned 
the  potency  of  the  legislative  fiat  in  building  rail- 
roads, and  as  the  Sandusky  crowd  had  no  money, 
nothing  came  of  the  scheme. 

The  agitation  was  kept  up,  however,  until  it  re- 
sulted in  the  most  remarkable  feat  in  railroad  build- 
ing ever  recorded.  On  the  evening  of  April  25,  1836, 
seven  men,  who  by  their  united  efforts  could  not  have 
raised  twenty-five  thousand  dollars,  met  in  the  Man- 
sion House,  at  Painesville,  O.,  and  organized  the 
Ohio  Railroad  Company,  to  build  a  line  from  Penn- 
sylvania across  the  northern  tier  of  Ohio  counties  to 
Manhattan,  then  a  rival  of  Toledo,  nowr  a  part  of  it. 

By  means  of  the  wonderful  "  plunder  law "  of 
Ohio,  which  obliged  the  State  to  furnish  one-third  of 
the  capital  of  railroad  companies  when  the  stockhold- 
ers had  furnished  the  other  two-thirds,  these  seven 
men,  by  simply  writing  their  names  as  subscribers  for 
six  hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  stock,  ob- 
tained two  hundred  and  nineteen  thousand  dollars  in 
State  bonds,  which  they  sold,  thus  obtaining  the  only 
capital  they  had. 

Having  decided  to  build  their  railroad  on  piles  in- 
stead of  grading  a  roadbed,  they  were  ready  for  the 
services  of  a  chief  engineer.  Cyrus  Williams  pre- 
sented himself  as  a  ready-made  engineer,  and  was 
given  the  job.  Williams  had  been  a  barn-builder  in 
central  New  York  until  he  was  crippled  by  a  glancing 
blow  from  his  adze. 

Then  he  turned  shoemaker  until  he  was  cured  of 
his  lameness  through  the  skill  of  an  Indian  friend  and 
the  marvelous  efficacy  of  "  Seneca  Oil,"  better  known 


220  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

now  as  plain  petroleum,  when  he  again  became  a  barn- 
builder,  and  by  easy  gradations  developed  into  a 
house-builder,  and  finally  a  bridge-builder.  As  the 
Ohio  Railroad  was  to  be  one  continuous  bridge,  he 
was  evidently  the  man  for  the  place. 

The  construction  outfit  was  the  most  wonderful 
traveling  railroad  circus  ever  seen.  First  came  a 
curious  framework  with  two  pile-drivers  at  the  front 
end.  Following  this  was  a  portable  sawmill  on  the 
track,  with  the  engine  coupled  direct  to  the  saw  shaft. 

This  mill  furnished  the  timbers  for  the  structure 
as  they  were  needed.  Back  of  the  sawmill,  also  on 
the  track,  was  a  traveling  boarding-house  for  the  men. 

The  piles  were  nine  to  twenty-five  feet  long,  ac- 
cording to  the  irregularities  of  the  ground.  After 
they  were  driven  they  were  cut  off  to  grade  by  a  cir- 
cular saw  on  a  swinging  arm.  The  pile-drivers  were 
moved  forward,  holes  were  bored  in  the  tops  of  the 
piles,  and  a  handful  of  salt  poured  in  to  preserve  the 
wood. 

Stringers  were  fastened  to  the  piles  by  wooden 
pins,  wooden  rails  were  laid  on  these,  and  finally 
strap-iron,  weighing  twenty-five  tons  to  the  mile,  was 
nailed  down.  Fifty-two  miles  of  this  structure,  from 
Fremont  to  Maumee,  were  finished  by  the  spring  of 
1843.  Then  the  continuous  quarrels  of  the  directors 
became  so  violent  that  they  put  an  end  to  the  work. 
No  train  was  ever  run  over  the  road. 

The  first  railroad  actually  operated  in  Ohio  was  the 
Mad  River  and  Lake  Erie,  now  part  of  the  Indian- 
apolis, Bloomington  and  Western,  the  first  earth  on 
which  was  turned  at  the  end  of  Water  Street,  San- 
dusky,  September  7,  1835,  with  great  festivities. 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS 

J.  H.  James,  of  Urbana,  president  of  the  road, 
happened  to  be  in  New  York  early  in  October,  1837. 
Hearing  that  Rogers,  Ketchum  &  Grosvenor,  found- 
ers of  the  Rogers  Locomotive  Works,  were  to  make 
a  trial  trip  with  their  first  locomotive  on  the  6th,  he 
obtained  permission  to  go  along. 

This  first  Rogers  engine  had  cylinders  eleven  by 
sixteen  inches  inside  the  frame,  with  eccentrics  out- 
side, and  a  single  pair  of  drivers  four  feet  six  inches 
in  diameter.  These  drivers  were  of  cast  iron,  with 
hollow  spokes  and  rims — a  great  novelty  then.  There 
was  a  four-wheeled  truck  in  front,  but  no  cab,  pilot, 
nor  headlight. 

However,  the  new  engine  gloried  in  a  whistle,  the 
first  ever  attached  to  a  locomotive.  On  the  trial  trip 
from  Paterson  to  New  Brunswick  and  back  the  whis- 
tle was  so  overworked  that  there  was  scarcely  steam 
enough  to  run  the  engine. 

President  James  was  so  entranced  with  the  new 
locomotive,  and  particularly  with  the  whistle,  that  he 
insisted  on  buying  it,  notwithstanding  that  it  had  been 
built  for  a  New  Jersey  road.  It  was  forthwith 
shipped  to  Sandusky,  arriving  November  17,  1837. 

Not  a  foot  of  track  had  been  laid,  but  the  arrival 
of  the  locomotive  inspired  immediate  efforts  in  that 
direction.  By  the  time  Thomas  Hogg,  who  had  ac- 
companied the  locomotive  as  engineer,  had  his  ma- 
chine set  up,  enough  track  had  been  laid  to  give  the 
delighted  Ohioans  an  opportunity  to  see,  and  partic- 
ularly to  hear,  a  locomotive  in  actual  operation.  That 
whistle  made  itself  heard  all  over  the  State. 

Admiring  legislators  were  so  impressed  with  the 
merits  of  a  locomotive  with  a  whistle  that  they  passed 


222  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

a  law  at  the  next  session  that  all  railroads  built  or  to 
be  built  in  the  State  of  Ohio  should  be  of  the  same 
gauge  as  the  locomotive  at  Sandusky,  which  hap- 
pened to  be  four  feet  ten  inches.  On  the  completion 
of  the  road  to  Belle vue,  sixteen  miles  from  Sandusky, 
it  was  opened  for  business. 

A  letter  in  a  newspaper  led  to  the  building  of  the 
present  Cleveland,  Columbus,  Cincinnati  and  St. 
Louis  Railroad,  just  as  a  similar  cause  led  to  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Michigan  Central.  The  letter  was 
written  by  J.  H.  Sargent,  the  noted  civil  engineer, 
and  was  published  in  the  Cleveland  Plain  Dealer 
early  in  1846.  It  opened  the  eyes  of  Cleveland  busi- 
ness men  to  the  dangerous  rivalry  of  Sandusky,  which 
was  pushing  a  railroad  south  to  Cincinnati.  A  com- 
pany was  formed,  and  Sargent  was  sent  out  to  make 
a  survey  in  1847. 

At  the  farther  end  of  the  State  railroad  develop- 
ment was  proceeding  more  rapidly.  The  Little 
Miami  Railroad,  from  Cincinnati  through  Xenia  to 
Springfield,  eighty-three  miles,  which  was  begun  in 
1841,  came  to  be  known  all  over  the  country  as  the 
"  Model  Road."  General  Superintendent  William 
H.  Clement  earned  this  reputation  for  his  road  by 
his  recognition  of  the  necessity  of  developing  the 
character  of  his  employees  and  enforcing  discipline. 

Clement's  power  was  never  so  well  shown  as  in  the 
unprecedentedly  severe  winter  of  1856-1857,  which 
brought  on  a  fuel  famine  as  bad  as  that  in  the  North- 
west in  the  winter  of  1906.  Coal  advanced  from 
fourteen  to  sixty  cents  a  bushel  in  Cincinnati.  The 
Little  Miami  was  the  only  road  reaching  a  coal-field. 
Axles  and  wheels  became  as  brittle  as  glass  in  the 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS 

intense  cold,  frequently  breaking  and  demoralizing 
the  train  service. 

People  became  so  clamorous  for  coal  that  they 
threatened  to  tear  up  the  tracks  because  the  road 
could  not  supply  their  needs  at  once.  In  this  emer- 
gency train-crews  were  kept  doubling  the  road  almost 
continuously,  with  little  chance  to  eat  and  still  less 
opportunity  for  sleep,  until  at  last  the  fuel  famine 
was  relieved. 

No  set  of  railroad  men  was  ever  called  upon  to 
endure  more  severe  service  than  the  Little  Miami  men 
that  winter.  Brakemen  in  those  crude  days  had  to 
get  out  and  stay  on  top  of  their  trains  often  for 
hours  with  the  temperature  twenty  degrees  below 
zero.  Yet  no  one  complained. 

Kentucky  was  five  years  ahead  of  Ohio  in  getting 
her  first  railroad  in  operation.  Henry  Clay  was  the 
leading  spirit  in  this  enterprise,  the  Lexington  and 
Ohio  River  Railroad,  the  first  west  of  the  Alleghanies 
and  south  of  the  Ohio.  It  was  to  run  from  Louisville 
to  Lexington,  and  was  begun  in  1831.  Mules  fur- 
nished the  motive  power  at  first.  The  cars  had  ac- 
commodations for  four  passengers,  provided  two  of 
them  did  not  object  to  riding  backwards. 

In  1833  a  Lexington  mechanic  made  a  curious  con- 
trivance which  he  called  a  "  steam  motive  power." 
One  bleak  November  day  the  steam  motive  power 
with  half  a  dozen  cars  attached  went  out  on  a  trial 
trip,  while  all  Louisville  stood  around  and  envied  the 
fortunate  few  who  could  get  aboard.  The  passengers 
put  on  rather  more  airs  than  the  occasion  seemed  to 
warrant,  until  the  train  got  about  four  miles  from 
town,  when  snow  began  falling.  At  this  the  steam 


224  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

motive  power  came  to  a  stop  and  refused  to  go  any 
farther.  The  passengers  had  to  foot  it  back  to  town, 
to  their  own  great  humiliation  and  the  intense  enjoy- 
ment of  those  who  had  been  left  behind. 

The  colored  population  felt  greatly  relieved  when 
the  steam  motive  power  was  condemned  as  impracti- 
cable, and  horses  were  substituted.  The  colored 
sages  had  said  all  along  that  horses  were  much  the 
safest  when  the  great  speed  of  eight  miles  an  hour 
was  to  be  attained. 

In  1835  a  locomotive  was  obtained  from  the  East 
and  kept  in  use  until  the  owners,  becoming  convinced 
that  a  railroad  would  pay,  rebuilt  the  line  and  ordered 
more  locomotives.  The  stage  companies  and  wag- 
oners had  thought  the  railroad  a  great  joke  at  first, 
but  when  they  realized  that  it  really  would  become  a 
competitor,  they  covered  the  track  with  gravel  and 
invited  any  one  who  wanted  his  head  blown  off  to 
step  up  and  try  to  remove  the  gravel. 

It  is  curious  to  find  that  Abraham  Lincoln  and 
Jeff  Davis  were  first  arrayed  against  each  other  over 
the  affairs  of  one  of  these  Western  incubator  rail- 
roads. The  road  which,  starting  February  27,  1847, 
as  the  Rock  Island  and  La  Salle  Railroad,  ultimately 
developed  into  the  Chicago,  Rock  Island  and  Pacific, 
was  the  first  road  to  connect  the  Great  Lakes  with  the 
Mississippi.  The  contract  for  the  first  railroad 
bridge  across  the  Mississippi  was  let  by  the  Rock 
Island  September  26,  1853.  The  bridge,  which  was 
at  Rock  Island,  was  finished  April  21,  1856.  Jeff 
Davis,  as  Secretary  of  War,  used  all  his  influence  in 
behalf  of  the  steamboat  interests  to  prevent  the  build- 
ing of  the  bridge,  even  directing  the  United  States 


INCUBATOR  RAILROADS 

District  Attorney  to  seek  an  injunction  to  stop  the 
work.  Judge  McLean,  however,  refused  to  grant  the 
injunction. 

Fifteen  days  after  the  bridge  was  opened  one  span 
of  it  was  burned  by  the  steamboat  Effie  Afton,  which 
was  on  fire,  drifting  against  a  pier.  The  owners  of 
the  boat  sued  the  railroad  for  obstructing  navigation 
and  causing  the  loss  of  their  boat.  But  Lincoln,  as 
counsel  for  the  railroad  company,  convinced  the  jury 
that  the  bridge  was  not  an  obstruction  to  navigation, 
thus  retrieving  the  prestige  he  had  lost  as  a  railroad 
lawyer  in  the  Michigan  Central  charter  affair,  and 
demonstrating  for  the  first  time  that  he  was  more 
than  a  match  for  Jeff  Davis. 

To  attempt  to  follow  even  a  material  portion  of  the 
formidable  flock  of  railroads  hatched  by  the  ardent 
optimists  of  the  central  West  would  be  as  profitless 
as  it  would  be  wearisome.  In  Illinois  alone  no  fewer 
than  789  distinct  railroad  organizations  were  formed 
between  1835  and  1882,  and  neighboring  States  were 
not  far  behind. 

After  1855  the  most  ambitious  schemes  of  the  "  In- 
ternal Improvement "  era  began  to  be  realized,  for 
railroad  building  then  went  on  with  great  rapidity. 
Illinois,  which  had  only  110  miles  of  railroad  in  1850, 
had  2,799  in  1860.  Ohio's  mileage  grew  from  575  in 
1850  to  2,945  ten  years  later;  Indiana's  from  228 
to  2,163;  Michigan's  from  342  to  779;  and  Wiscon- 
sin's from  20  to  904. 

The  twin  brothers  of  Colonel  Sellers  had  only  mis- 
taken their  cue,  and  appeared  on  the  stage  twenty 
years  too  soon. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD 

VIEWED  through  the  perspective  of  years,  the 
building  of  the  first  transcontinental  railroad 
seems  less  a  commercial  enterprise,  stimulated  by 
political  considerations,  than  a  great  melodrama  in 
which  the  stage  was  a  continent  and  the  audience  a 
nation.  Like  many  another  prosperous  production, 
the  first  act  of  this  episode  in  real  life  was  swamped 
with  talk  and  skimped  in  action.  But  thereafter  the 
thrills  came  thick  and  fast  in  an  ascending  scale  of 
climaxes,  culminating  in  a  grand  finale  which  earned 
a  world's  applause. 

Taking  all  the  circumstances  into  consideration,  no 
railroad  project  so  daring  has  ever  been  proposed. 
Bearing  in  mind  the  small  population  and  the  poverty 
of  the  Nation,  the  half-developed  state  of  the  practice 
of  railroad  building  and  operation,  and  of  the  myriad 
other  sciences  upon  which  it  depends,  the  immensity 
of  the  wilderness  to  be  crossed,  the  distance  from  the 
base  of  supplies,  the  crudeness  of  transportation  facil- 
ities, the  number  and  implacable  ferocity  of  the  sav- 
age foes  to  be  encountered,  it  must  be  conceded  that 
the  building  of  the  Union  Pacific  and  Central  Pacific 
must  forever  remain  unparalleled  in  the  annals  of  the 
railroad. 

Until  the  rails  met  on  that  fateful  day  at  Promon- 
tory the  Union  was  incomplete.  It  was  but  a  geo- 

226 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD 

graphical  dogma,  a  mere  political  theory,  which  an 
attempt  to  materialize  the  proposed  Pacific  Empire, 
or  other  contingency,  might  readily  have  changed. 
The  driving  of  that  last  spike  riveted  the  bonds  that 
made  the  East  and  the  West  one  grand  whole  as 
surely  as  it  held  the  rail  in  place.  All  the  magnificent 
achievements  of  after  years  have  been  possible  to  the 
great  Nation  then  made  a  virile  fact:  whether  they 
would  have  been  possible  otherwise  may  well  be 
doubted. 

Less  than  six  months  after  the  De  Witt  Clinton, 
the  third  locomotive  built  on  American  soil,  had  made 
its  initial  trip  from  Albany  to  Schenectady,  when 
there  were  less  than  a  hundred  miles  of  railroad  in  the 
country,  Judge  S.  W.  Dexter,  of  Ann  Arbor,  Mich., 
proposed,  in  an  editorial  in  his  paper,  the  Weekly 
Emigrant,,  of  February  6, 1832,  that  a  railroad  should 
be  built  from  the  Great  Lakes,  across  more  than  two 
thousand  miles  of  unbroken,  almost  unexplored,  wil- 
derness, to  the  Pacific  Ocean. 

In  the  winter  of  1836-7  John  Plumbe,  a  Welsh 
civil  engineer  who  had  worked  under  Moncure  Rob- 
inson in  surveying  a  route  over  the  Alleghanies  for 
the  State  of  Pennsylvania  in  1831-2,  and  who  had 
afterward  acted  as  superintendent  of  the  railroad  be- 
tween Richmond  and  Petersburg,  Va.,  asked  a  few 
friends  and  acquaintances  to  meet  him  at  his  home  in 
Dubuque,  la.,  to  discuss  privately  the  building  of  a 
railroad  to  the  Pacific  coast.  Plumbe,  who  acted  as 
correspondent  for  papers  in  New  York,  Boston,  Phil- 
adelphia, Baltimore,  and  Cincinnati,  had  long  been 
advocating  the  building  of  a  transcontinental  rail- 
road. Pursuant  to  a  call  issued  by  him,  the  first  pub- 


228  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

lie  convention  ever  held  to  discuss  the  Pacific  rail- 
road project,  met  in  Dubuque  March  31,  1838.  Res- 
olutions asking  Congress  to  appropriate  funds  for  a 
survey  were  adopted  and  in  due  time  were  laid  before 
Congress  by  Territorial  Delegate  George  W.  Jones. 
In  response  Congress  set  aside  funds  with  which  a 
survey  for  a  railroad  was  made  from  Milwaukee  to 
Dubuque.  In  the  winter  of  1839-40  Plumbe  induced 
the  legislature  of  Wisconsin  to  address  a  memorial  to 
Congress  asking  that  the  survey  be  continued  west  of 
the  Mississippi.  He  took  the  memorial  to  Washing- 
ton himself  and  devoted  a  good  deal  of  time  to  advo- 
cating his  project,  but  he  was  too  far  ahead  of  time, 
and  nothing  came  of  his  efforts. 

Then  came  Asa  Whitney,  a  New  York  merchant, 
who,  while  on  a  business  trip  to  China,  became  filled 
with  the  idea  of  a  railroad  across  the  continent  as  the 
means  of  securing  for  America  the  rich  trade  of  the 
Orient.  Returning  to  New  York  in  1840,  he  gave 
up  business,  and  with  the  fanaticism  of  a  Mad  Mullah 
preaching  a  holy  war  devoted  ten  years  of  his  life  and 
all  of  his  fortune  to  advocating  the  immediate  build- 
ing of  a  transcontinental  railroad. 

In  1845  he  submitted  to  Congress  a  proposal  to 
undertake  the  building  of  the  road  in  consideration 
of  a  grant  of  land  sixty  miles  wide  for  the  length  of 
the  route.  For  the  next  five  years  he  bombarded  the 
national  legislature  with  memorials  and  addresses, 
carrying  on,  at  the  same  time,  a  vigorous  publicity 
campaign. 

Whitney's  plan  was  coldly  received  in  the  East. 
Six  months'  hard  work  was  required  to  get  enough 
signatures  of  well-known  citizens  of  Philadelphia  to 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    229 

justify  a  call  for  a  meeting,  which  was  finally  held  in 
that  city  December  23,  1846.  Whitney's  eloquence 
made  few  converts. 

Going  to  New  York  City,  he  fared  even  worse. 
Although  Mayor  John  Swift  was  induced  to  preside 
at  a  meeting  January  4,  1847,  a  mob  broke  up  the 
meeting,  and  Mayor  Swift,  the  vice-presidents,  and 
Whitney  were  glad  to  escape  by  the  back  door. 

Whitney's  bill  was  killed  in  Congress  in  July,  1848, 
chiefly  through  the  efforts  of  Thomas  Benton.  The 
project  was  revived  in  another  bill,  only  to  be  sum- 
marily slaughtered  in  January,  1849,  through  the 
efforts  of  Benton.  Then  Whitney  made  a  canvass  of 
the  State  legislatures,  and  in  1850  was  back  in  Con- 
gress again  with  a  new  bill  for  his  project,  backed 
by  memorials  from  the  legislatures  of  fourteen  States 
and  from  public  meetings  in  eight  cities. 

At  the  first  session  of  the  Thirty-first  Congress 
committees  of  both  Houses  made  exhaustive  reports 
favoring  Whitney's  transcontinental  railroad  project; 
but  sectional  feeling  killed  the  bill  a  third  time, 
and  that  was  the  end  of  Whitney's  efforts.  Worn 
out  with  his  exertions,  and  his  money  all  gone,  he  had 
no  choice  but  to  give  up  the  struggle.  His  remain- 
ing years  were  eked  out  on  the  proceeds  of  a  small 
dairy  in  Washington. 

An  interesting  estimate  of  Whitney's  character, 
which  may  explain  why  Congress  looked  with  so  little 
favor  upon  his  scheme,  may  be  found  in  the  following 
extract  from  an  editorial  in  the  American  Railroad 
Journal  of  April  5,  1851 : 

"  We  freely  admit  that  Mr.  Whitney  possesses  some  quali- 
ties which  eminently  fit  him  to  head  a  great  enterprise.  He 


230  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

is  enthusiastic  and  possessed  to  a  remarkable  degree  with  the 
capacity  for  inspiring  others  with  his  own  views.  He  is 
deterred  by  no  obstacle  and  discouraged  by  no  defeats.  But 
here  his  qualifications  for  conducting  to  a  successful  issue  a 
work  of  such  immense  magnitude  as  that  of  a  railroad  from 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  end.  He  is  self-confident  without 
experience  or  training,  arrogant  in  his  opinions,  and  over- 
bearing toward  all  who  differ  from  him.  He  has  a  hearty 
contempt  for  the  whole  engineering  profession  and  loses  his 
temper  the  moment  that  one  of  that  class  talks  about  tunnel- 
ing, bridging,  excavation,  etc.,  which  are  certainly  great  an- 
noyances in  railroad  construction  and  which  have  made  others, 
besides  Mr.  Whitney,  lose  their  temper.  He  can  never  toler- 
ate the  introduction  of  such  disagreeable  topics  as  these,  but 
is  never  tired  of  poring  over  maps  and  enlarging  upon  the 
grandeur  of  his  scheme.  So  long  as  his  mission  was  confined 
to  the  matter  of  arousing  the  attention  of  our  people  to  the 
importance  of  the  proposed  work,  his  success  was  remark- 
able. The  moment  he  came  to  the  question  of  construction 
his  plans  failed  to  receive  respectful  attention.  Congress,  in 
fact,  refused  the  courtesy  of  printing  extra  copies  of  his  bill 
for  circulation  and  turned  the  cold  shoulder  upon  the  whole 
scheme.  As  far  as  the  railroad  to  the  Pacific  is  concerned 
the  public  voice  is  unanimous  in  its  favor ;  but  in  reference  to 
the  plan  of  construction,  that  of  Whitney  has  hardly  a  de- 
fender. We  are  sorry  for  his  disappointments  and  heartily 
wish  he  would  adapt  his  scheme  to  the  practical  ideas  of  the 
present  day,  of  which  he  appears  to  have  not  the  least 
appreciation." 

When  Whitney  made  his  final  exit,  Josiah  Perham, 
of  Boston,  took  up  the  role  of  prophet  to  carry  on 
the  crusade  for  a  transcontinental  railroad.  To  Per- 
ham his  efforts  were  literally  in  the  nature  of  a  cru- 
sade, for  he  believed  he  had  a  divine  mission  to  bring 
about  the  building  of  the  road. 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD 

Perham  was  a  Maine  woolen  manufacturer,  who 
lost  all  his  property  by  unwise  plunging  in  land  spec- 
ulation*. Going  to  Boston  in  1842,  he  started  a  wool 
commission  business,  in  which  he  prospered  for  a  time, 
but  was  again  a  bankrupt  seven  years  later.  He 
was  about  to  start  for  California  during  the  great 
excitement  of  1849  over  the  discovery  of  gold,  when 
he  chanced  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  an  artist  who 
had  just  completed  a  panorama  of  Niagara  Falls, 
the  St.  Lawrence,  and  the  Saguenay.  He  saw  a 
chance  to  make  some  money  out  of  this,  so  he  aban- 
doned his  contemplated  trip  to  California. 

Perham's  plan  was  to  go  to  nearby  towns  and  or- 
ganize cheap  excursions  to  Boston  to  see  the  "  Seven 
Mile  Mirror,"  as  the  panorama  was  called.  This  gave 
country  people  a  chance  to  spend  a  day  in  the  city  at 
small  cost,  which  they  were  quick  to  accept,  making 
Perham's  scheme  a  great  success  for  him  and  for  the 
railroads. 

At  first  the  railroad  managers  were  astonished  at 
the  way  Perham's  plan  caught  the  popular  fancy; 
but  they  soon  recovered  and  did  everything  they  could 
to  help  it  along.  It  was  in  this  way  that  the  cheap 
excursion  business  originated. 

Perham  quickly  extended  his  field  of  operations  to 
include  all  New  England  and  Canada.  In  1850  he 
brought  more  than  two  hundred  thousand  excursion- 
ists to  Boston.  Then  he  began  sending  parties  to 
New  York,  Niagara,  Quebec,  and  other  points  of  in- 
terest. In  twelve  years  he  had  made  another  for- 
tune, and  had  become  one  of  the  most  widely  known 
men  in  the  country. 

While  busy  with  his  popular  excursions,  Perham 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

found  time  to  become  an  enthusiast  on  the  subject  of 
the  Pacific  Railroad,  to  evolve  a  scheme  for  building 
it  that  certainly  had  the  merit  of  originality,  and  to 
convince  himself  that  he  had  been  inspired  to  execute 
it.  Perham's  plan,  perfected  in  1853,  was  to  apply 
the  popular  idea  to  the  financing  of  the  Pacific  Rail- 
road. He  thought  he  could  collect  a  million  sub- 
scriptions of  a  hundred  dollars  each  from  the  general 
public,  which,  he  imagined,  was  eager  to  make  such 
an  investment  from  patriotic  motives.  The  People's 
Pacific  Railroad  was  incorporated  in  Maine,  March 
20,  1860. 

In  Congress  Perham  received  scant  encourage- 
ment, even  though  he  was  able  to  secure  the  support 
of  the  omnipotent  Thad  Stevens.  Finally  a  bill  was 
drafted  which  met  the  views  of  Congress,  but  not 
until  after  the  Union  Pacific  and  Central  Pacific  had 
been  launched.  The  measure  was  signed  by  Presi- 
dent Lincoln  July  2,  1864. 

The  People's  Pacific  Railroad  became  the  forerun- 
ner of  the  Northern  Pacific ;  but  Perham  did  not  live 
to  see  the  work  under  way.  His  last  fortune  was 
frittered  away  on  this  Pacific  Railroad  propaganda, 
and,  like  Whitney,  he  died  a  poor  man. 

The  first  soil  actually  moved  in  the  attempt  to  build 
a  transcontinental  railroad  was  turned  July  4,  1851, 
on  the  south  bank  of  Choteau  pond,  on  the  outskirts 
of  St.  Louis,  by  Mayor  Luther  M.  Kennett,  who  then 
expressed  the  eloquent  hope  that  the  spade  with 
which  he  did  it  "  would  not  rust  until  it  was  finally 
burnished  by  the  golden  sands  of  the  Pacific."  St. 
Louis,  then  a  city  of  90,000  inhabitants,  with  a  com- 
merce of  fifty  million  dollars  a  year,  had  had  the  rail- 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    233 

road  fever  ever  since  the  first  railroad  convention  was 
held  April  20,  1836.  Yet  nothing  was  accomplished 
until  the  Pacific  Railroad  Company,  of  which  Thomas 
Allen  was  president,  was  incorporated  January  31, 
1850.  The  track  of  the  company,  which  ultimately 
became  the  Missouri  Pacific,  did  not  reach  Kansas 
City  until  October,  1865.  The  spades  of  its  builders 
have  not  yet  been  "  burnished  by  the  golden  sands  of 
the  Pacific." 

Meanwhile,  in  the  decade  from  1850  to  1860,  Con- 
gress devoted  a  large  and  steadily  increasing  propor- 
tion of  its  time  to  discussion  of  the  Pacific  railroad 
project.  As  the  idea  grew,  no  Congressional  orator 
considered  an  address  on  any  topic  complete  without 
a  fulsome  peroration  devoted  to  the  Pacific  railroad. 
Senator  Butler,  of  South  Carolina,  declared: 

'  The  Pacific  railroad  project  comes  nearer  being 
a  subject  of  deification  than  anything  I  ever  heard 
in  the  Senate." 

The  net  result  of  all  this  talk  was  an  appropriation 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  in  1853  to 
defray  the  expenses  of  six  surveys  to  ascertain  the 
most  practicable  route  for  the  proposed  road.  An 
additional  appropriation,  later  on,  paid  for  four  more 
surveys.  There  was  scarcely  a  town  or  a  hamlet 
from  Canada  to  the  Gulf  and  the  Atlantic  that  was 
not  only  willing  to  be  benefited  to  the  exclusion  of 
other  towns  by  being  made  the  terminus  of  a  railroad 
built  at  government  expense,  but  was  also  determined 
to  see  that  the  road  was  not  built  on  any  other  terms. 

Charleston,  S.  C. ;  Memphis,  New  Orleans,  Corpus 
Christi,  Tex.;  Fulton,  Ark.,  and  Independence, 
Mo.,  were  among  the  insistent  candidates  for  the 


234  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

terminus,  backed  by  the  Southern  statesmen,  who 
were  resolved  that  the  road  should  not  benefit  the 
North,  whatever  happened. 

The  war  with  Mexico  had  added  California  to  the 
Union.  A  year  later  the  discovery  of  gold,  followed 
by  the  rapid  development  of  agricultural  and  other 
resources,  capped,  finally,  by  the  finding  of  the  great 
Comstock  lode,  built  up  sources  of  traffic  which  de- 
manded better  facilities  than  were  afforded  by  a  sea 
voyage  of  nineteen  thousand  miles.  Lastly,  there  ap- 
peared at  the  proper  time,  as  he  always  does,  the 
Man. 

To  Theodore  D.  Judah  belongs  the  credit  of  mak- 
ing the  actual  beginning  of  the  first  transcontinental 
railroad.  Judah  was  educated  at  the  Troy  Engineer- 
ing School.  He  was  resident  engineer  of  the  Con- 
necticut River  Railroad,  surveyed  and  built  the  rail- 
road from  Niagara  Falls  to  Lewiston,  and  served  as 
engineer  on  the  Erie  Canal,  and  on  the  Rochester  and 
Niagara  Falls  Railroad. 

He  gave  up  a  lucrative  position  in  1854  to  go  to 
California  to  build  the  Sacramento  Valley  Railroad, 
the  first  on  the  Pacific  coast.  Twenty-two  miles  of 
that  road  were  completed  in  1856. 

Judah  was  not  only  almost  as  much  of  a  fanatic 
on  the  subject  of  a  Pacific  railroad  as  Asa  Whitney, 
but  he  combined  with  the  enthusiasm  of  the  promoter 
the  practical  knowledge  of  the  engineer  and  the  exec- 
utive capacity  which  gets  things  done.  In  the  fall 
of  1856  he  went  East  to  raise  funds  for  extending  the 
Sacramento  Valley  Railroad  from  Marysville  to  San 
Francisco. 

The  winter  of  1856-1857  he  spent  in  Washington 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    235 

trying  to  secure  a  land  grant  for  the  railroad  scheme. 
Returning  to  California,  he  took  a  prominent  part 
in  the  railroad  convention  held  in  San  Francisco  Sep- 
tember 19,  1859.  He  was  sent  as  the  accredited 
agent  of  this  convention  to  Washington  to  lobby  for 
the  transcontinental  road. 

His  room  became  the  headquarters  for  advocates  of 
the  Pacific  railroad,  and  he  himself  was  the  recog- 
nized authority  on  everything  relating  to  the  subject. 
He  was  made  secretary  of  the  Pacific  Railroad  Com- 
mittee of  the  House,  and  was  accorded  the  privileges 
of  the  floor  of  both  Houses. 

So  effectively  did  Judah  labor  that  he  returned  to 
California  in  the  summer  of  1860,  confident  of  success 
when  the  new  administration  came  in,  to  solve  a  prob- 
lem which  was  the  bugbear  of  timid  Congressmen. 
This  was  to  find  a  pass  through  the  Sierras. 

Judah  had  no  money  to  pay  for  surveys,  and  the 
business  men  of  San  Francisco  had  borne  his  expenses 
to  Washington  that  he  might  induce  other  people  to 
foot  such  bills,  not  to  earn  the  privilege  of  doing  it 
themselves.  So  the  engineer  went  to  his  friends  in 
the  mountains. 

They  hadn't  much  to  spare,  but  what  they  did  have 
they  gave  freely.  Dutch  Flat,  Illinoistown,  Grass 
Valley,  and  Nevada  City,  among  them,  raised  the 
money  to  buy  the  outfit  for  Judah's  trip  into  the 
Sierras  and  the  men  to  help  him. 

Mrs.  Judah  accompanied  the  party.  While  her 
husband  was  out  with  the  men  she  caught  trout  for 
their  meals.  When  the  larder  was  supplied  she  laid 
aside  her  rod  and  sketched  the  magnificent  mountain 
scenery.  Two  of  her  sketches  were  used  on  the  stock 


236  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

certificates  of  the  Central  Pacific  Railroad;  others 
went  to  enlighten  outsiders  regarding  California. 

Judah  was  as  successful  with  his  transit  as  his  wife 
was  with  rod  and  pencil.  He  found  a  pass  by  which 
the  Sierra  Nevadas  could  be  surmounted  128  miles 
east  of  Sacramento  on  a  maximum  grade  of  105  feet 
to  the  mile  at  a  maximum  cost  of  $150,000  a  mile,  a 
saving  of  184  miles  in  distance  and  $13,500,000  in 
money  over  the  route  proposed  by  the  government 
engineers. 

Returning  to  Dutch  Flat,  he  made  the  first  profile 
of  the  new  pass  on  the  counter  of  his  friend  D.  W. 
Strong's  drug-store.  Armed  with  this,  he  pro- 
ceeded to  Sacramento.  He  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
dropping  in  at  the  hardware  store  of  Huntington  & 
Hopkins,  No.  52  K  Street,  where  he  was  always  sure 
of  finding  sympathetic  spirits  with  whom  he  could 
discuss  his  hobby. 

Calling  together  C.  P.  Huntington  and  Mark 
Hopkins,  the  proprietors  of  the  store;  the  Crocker 
brothers,  dry  goods  merchants  down  the  street,  and 
Leland  Stanford,  wholesale  grocer,  Judah  told  of  the 
practicable  pass  he  had  found.  They  were  quick  to 
realize  what  it  meant,  and  warmly  urged  him  to  go  to 
San  Francisco  and  raise  the  capital ;  then  they  would 
help  him  to  form  a  company  and  take  care  of  the 
profits.  The  uniform  willingness  to  let  some  one 
else  foot  the  bill  for  the  Pacific  railroad  was  as  spon- 
taneous and  as  cordial  west  of  the  Sierras  as  east. 

Judah  went  to  San  Francisco  with  the  profile  of 
his  practicable  pass  and  figures  showing  that  two  hun- 
dred eight-mule  teams  passed  over  the  Placerville 
road  to  Virginia  City  daily,  and  half  as  many  over  the 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    237 

Henness  road,  which  traffic  alone  would  make  a  very 
respectable  local  income  for  a  railroad.  But  the  San 
Francisco  capitalists  laughed  at  him. 

Once  more  Judah  traveled  the  dusty  road  to  the 
hardware  store  in  Sacramento.  What  he  said  when 
he  arrived  there  no  outsider  will  ever  know,  but  it 
must  have  been  very  much  to  the  point,  for  in  June, 
1861,  the  Central  Pacific  Railroad  Company,  with  a 
capital  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  dol- 
lars, was  organized. 

Leland  Stanford,  who  had  just  been  elected  Gov- 
ernor, was  president  of  the  company;  C.  P.  Hunt- 
ington,  vice-president;  Mark  Hopkins,  the  other 
member  of  the  hardware  firm,  treasurer;  James 
Bailey,  secretary,  and  Judah,  chief  engineer.  The 
Sacramento  merchants  didn't  object  to  putting  their 
names  down  for  fifteen  thousand  dollars  each,  or  even 
to  contributing  enough  actual  cash  to  send  Judah 
East  again  after  the  necessary  capital. 

In  October,  1861,  Judah  set  out  for  Washington 
once  more,  as  agent  of  the  Central  Pacific  Railroad, 
to  secure  government  aid  in  bonds  and  land  to  build 
the  road.  He  drew  up  a  bill  embodying  substan- 
tially the  plan  upon  which  the  road  was  finally  built, 
and  intrusted  it  to  A.  A.  Sargent,  newly  elected  Rep- 
resentative from  California. 

The  House  passed  the  bill  May  6,  1862,  the  Senate 
June  20,  and  President  Lincoln  affixed  his  signature 
July  1.  Judah  was  able  to  start  back  to  Sacramento 
ten  months  after  he  left  there  with  his  object  accom- 
plished. 

Even  with  government  aid  assured,  the  San  Fran- 
cisco bankers  still  refused  to  put  up  the  ready  money 


238  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

needed  to  make  a  beginning.  Orders  had  been  given 
for  plans  for  an  office  building.  Just  as  a  final  and 
more  than  usually  emphatic  negative  had  been  re- 
ceived to  the  last  appeal  for  funds,  the  architect 
walked  into  the  hardware  store  and  with  pardonable 
pride  exhibited  his  designs. 

Huntington,  senior  partner  in  the  hardware  firm 
and  the  actual  executive  of  the  railroad  company, 
glowered  at  the  plans  in  silence.  At  last  he  blurted 
out: 

"  How  much  is  that  thing  going  to  cost?" 

"  Only  twelve  thousand  dollars." 

"  Twelve  thousand  dollars !  Why,  man,  do  you 
know  we'll  have  to  pay  the  bill  ourselves?  Here,  I 
can  beat  that  to  a  frazzle." 

Taking  up  a  piece  of  chalk,  Huntington  rapidly 
drew  on  a  door  the  plans  for  the  first  general  offices 
of  the  Central  Pacific  Railroad.  The  building  was 
completed  that  same  afternoon,  at  a  cost  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  dollars.  Finding  that  they  really 
would  have  to  make  a  beginning  with  their  own 
scanty  means,  the  Central  Pacific  directors  decided 
that  they  would  only  undertake  what  they  could  pay 
for. 

Grading  was  begun  January  1,  1863,  when  Gov- 
ernor Leland  Stanford  shoveled  some  sand  from  a 
cart  into  a  mudhole  at  the  foot  of  K  Street,  Sacra- 
mento, in  the  presence  of  the  members  of  the  legisla- 
ture, the  State  and  city  officers,  and  a  mixed  crowd 
which  was  highly  amused  by  the  idea  of  a  bunch  of 
local  storekeepers  trying  to  build  a  railroad  across 
the  continent.  But  once  the  work  was  begun  it  never 
stopped  until  it  was  completed. 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    239 

The  first  shipment  of  rails  arrived  in  Sacramento 
in  October,  1863.  By  June  1,  1864,  the  track  had 
been  laid  to  Newcastle,  thirty-one  miles  from  Sacra- 
mento, and  nine  hundred  and  thirty  feet  above  the 
sea. 

Although  the  legislature  authorized  San  Fran- 
cisco, Sacramento,  and  Placer  counties  to  issue  bonds 
to  a  total  amount  of  one  million  one  hundred  and  fif- 
teen thousand  dollars  in  aid  of  the  road,  this  action 
had  no  effect  whatever  upon  the  adamantine  hearts  of 
the  coast  capitalists.  In  desperation  the  hardware 
store  crowd  scraped  the  till  and  managed  to  get  to- 
gether enough  money  to  send  Judah  East  once  more — 
this  time  to  try  to  sell  their  franchise. 

But  he  caught  the  fever  in  crossing  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama,  and  died  in  November,  1863.  He  was  only 
thirty-seven  years  old,  but  he  had  laid  the  corner- 
stone of  a  mighty  monument  to  himself. 

Fortunately  for  the  hardware  store  crowd,  the 
Eastern  capitalists  preferred  government  bonds  to 
railroad  securities.  The  only  way  to  get  back  the 
small  amount  they  had  invested  was  to  put  in  more 
and  keep  putting  in  more.  Accepting  the  inevitable 
at  last,  they  went  at  the  task  in  dead  earnest,  and  by 
a  succession  of  miracles  raised  money  enough  to  meet 
the  pay-rolls  and  other  bills  while  they  worked  with 
desperate  energy  to  finance  the  enterprise.  Also, 
they  took  care  to  retain  control  of  the  situation. 

Not  until  September,  1866,  three  years  and  eight 
months  from  the  date  of  beginning,  did  the  rails  reach 
Alta,  seventy  miles  east  of  Sacramento,  at  an  eleva- 
tion of  5,625  feet.  Two  months  later  the  line  had 
been  extended  twenty-three  miles  farther  to  Cisco, 


240  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

overcoming  an  elevation  of  2,286  feet  in  that  dis- 
tance. The  road  was  now  in  the  very  heart  of  the 
Sierras,  only  thirteen  miles  from  the  summit. 

By  this  time  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad,  which  had 
been  organized  to  build  the  eastern  end  of  the  line, 
stimulated  by  the  example  of  the  Central  Pacific,  was 
under  way.  Although  the  former  did  nothing  for 
eighteen  months  after  the  latter  began  operations,  by 
the  time  the  Central  Pacific  was  ninety-three  miles 
into  the  mountains,  where  the  maximum  government 
subsidy  was  only  half  the  cost  of  construction,  the 
Union  Pacific  had  extended  its  rails  two  hundred  and 
forty-seven  miles  out  on  the  plains,  on  an  average 
grade  of  thirteen  and  a  half  feet  to  the  mile,  where 
the  minimum  subsidy  more  than  paid  for  the  road. 

The  Union  Pacific  Company  had  seen  quite  as 
much  of  trouble  as  the  hardware  store  crowd.  Under 
the  act  of  1862,  the  Union  Pacific  was  duly  organized, 
with  General  John  A.  Dix  as  president,  and  T.  C. 
Durant  as  vice-president.  By  heroic  exertions  the 
company  contrived  to  raise  money  enough  to  pay  the 
expenses  of  celebrating  the  breaking  of  ground  at 
Omaha,  December  2,  1863,  eleven  months  after 
ground  was  broken  on  the  Central  Pacific. 

That  was  all  that  was  done  for  many  a  day.  No- 
body wanted  Union  Pacific  Railroad  securities  or 
land.  The  Mississippi  and  Missouri  Railroad,  which 
later  became  the  Rock  Island,  had  sent  General  G. 
M.  Dodge  out  across  the  plains  on  a  survey  ten  years 
before,  but  the  company  didn't  think  it  worth  while 
to  push  on  beyond  the  Missouri  River. 

Neither  could  the  Northwestern,  then  building 
across  Iowa,  see  any  money  in  a  railroad  across  the 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD 

lonely  plains.  No  one  would  have  anything  to  do 
with  the  Union  Pacific  on  any  terms  whatsoever. 
The  company  got  into  such  desperate  straits  that  it 
was  obliged  to  sell  part  of  its  material  and  cars. 

No  one  coming  to  the  rescue  of  the  Pacific  railroad 
project,  Congress,  in  1864,  had  doubled  the  subsidy, 
making  the  amount  $16,000,  $32,000,  and  $48,000  a 
mile  in  bonds,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  country, 
and  twenty  sections  of  land  per  mile  instead  of  ten. 
Altogether,  the  government  aid  offered  lacked  but 
$4,000,000  of  the  estimated  cost  of  the  road. 

In  spite  of  everything  that  could  be  done  the 
Union  Pacific  remained  a  financial  outcast  until  the 
fall  of  1867.  Capitalists  knew  the  road  could  never 
be  completed,  and  that  it  could  not  possibly  earn  ex- 
penses if  it  was  built.  When  it  seemed  as  if  the 
whole  affair  was  doomed  to  become  a  humiliating 
fiasco,  Congressman  Oakes  Ames,  of  Massachusetts, 
a  wealthy  manufacturer  whose  shovels  had  become 
favorably  known  wherever  such  implements  were 
used,  was  asked  by  the  administration  to  undertake 
the  building  of  the  Union  Pacific.  By  the  influence 
of  his  great  wealth  and  business  connections,  aided 
by  the  attraction  of  the  increased  subsidy,  he  was 
finally  able  to  finance  the  enterprise  through  the 
medium  of  a  construction  company,  the  notorious 
Credit  Mobilier,  the  cause  of  the  greatest  legislative 
scandal  in  American  history. 

As  the  government  assumed  all  risks  under  this 
plan,  and  the  profits  promised  to  be  enormous,  capital 
at  last  took  up  the  project,  though  timidly.  So 
grudgingly  was  money  advanced  that  the  work 
would  have  come  to  a  stop  even  then,  and  the  comple- 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

tion  of  the  enterprise  would  have  been  delayed  for 
years,  if  Oakes  Ames  had  not  sacrificed  his  personal 
fortune,  saying: 

"  We  must  save  the  credit  of  the  road.  I  will 
fail." 

But  as  soon  as  it  became  a  certainty  that  the  Union 
Pacific  would  be  completed,  and  that  the  builders 
would  make  immense  profits  from  its  construction 
and  operation,  blackmailers,  stockjobbers,  and  plun- 
derers of  every  degree  pounced  upon  it  like  a  pack  of 
famished  wolves.  Cornelius  Wendell,  a  government 
commissioner  whose  duty  it  was  to  examine  a  com- 
pleted section,  refused  to  approve  it  until  he  was  paid 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars.  As  delivery  of  the 
government  subsidy  was  dependent  upon  his  ap- 
proval, he  got  the  money. 

James  Fisk  managed  to  gain  control,  and  then  held 
up  the  company  in  the  most  approved  style,  threaten- 
ing to  ruin  it  unless  paid  his  price.  When  more 
legislation  was  needed  influential  Congressmen  re- 
quired to  be  "  seen,"  and  Oakes  Ames  made  the 
crowning  mistake  of  his  career  by  taking  three  hun- 
dred and  seventy-five  shares  of  Credit  Mobilier  stock 
to  Washington,  where,  in  his  own  phrase,  which  has 
become  a  classic,  he  "  put  it  where  it  would  do  the 
most  good." 

Those  who  could  find  no  leverage  by  which  to  ex- 
tort money  busied  themselves  with  criticising  finan- 
cial and  engineering  methods  and  everything  else  con- 
nected with  the  project.  It  seemed  as  if  there  were 
as  many  foes  in  the  rear  as  at  the  front. 

Besides  all  this  the  physical  obstacles  to  be  over- 
come were  immense.  Omaha  for  all  practical  pur- 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD 

poses  was  almost  as  inaccessible  as  San  Francisco. 
The  nearest  railroad  was  the  Northwestern,  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  to  the  east,  and  in  no  hurry  to 
reach  Omaha.  Every  pound  of  supplies  had  to  be 
brought  overland  by  wagon  or  up  the  Missouri  River 
in  steamboats. 

As  a  sample  of  the  expense  of  railroad  building 
under  these  circumstances  it  may  be  mentioned  that 
ties  cost  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents  each  when  they 
were  finally  in  place.  The  workmen  had  so  little 
confidence  in  the  solvency  of  the  concern  that  they 
demanded  and  received  their  day's  pay  before  be- 
ginning work. 

While  the  white  men,  who  had  been  so  ready  to 
applaud  the  abstract  idea  of  a  transcontinental  rail- 
road, and  so  reluctant  to  facilitate  its  realization,  were 
giving  the  Union  Pacific  so  much  trouble,  the  Indians 
rendered  the  company  an  invaluable  service.  This 
they  achieved  through  an  earnest  effort  to  lift  the 
scalps  of  General  G.  M.  Dodge  and  his  escort. 

In  the  winter  of  1864-1865  the  Indians  had  de- 
clared war  by  way  of  varying  the  steady  round  of 
unofficial  outrages,  which  had  begun  to  pall  upon 
them.  General  Dodge,  who  had  made  the  survey 
for  the  Rock  Island  in  1853,  was  sent  out  to  conduct 
the  campaign  against  them. 

Repeated  efforts  had  failed  to  reveal  a  pass  by 
which  the  road  could  be  taken  over  the  mountain 
range  in  southern  Wyoming.  General  Dodge,  being 
keenly  interested  in  the  Union  Pacific  survey,  took 
advantage  of  every  opportunity  to  pick  up  topo- 
graphical points. 

One  day  the  general  took  an  escort  of  six  cavalry- 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

men,  and,  arranging  to  meet  the  main  body  of  troops 
at  a  certain  point,  set  out  to  have  a  look  at  the  coun- 
try. About  noon  he  discovered  a  large  body  of  In- 
dians trying  to  corral  him  and  his  escort.  Being  a 
good  Indian  fighter,  he  rode  hard  for  the  nearest 
ridge,  where  there  was  no  cover  to  enable  the  scalp- 
hunters  to  stalk  him,  and  started  along  its  crest  toward 
his  command,  stopping  occasionally  to  beat  off  the 
Indians  whenever  they  became  too  eager. 

After  a  long  ride  the  little  party  reached  the  main 
body  of  the  troops.  The  ridge  upon  which  the  In- 
dians had  herded  them  all  afternoon  had  led  them 
down  a  gentle  slope  without  a  break  to  the  plain. 
The  pass  through  the  mountains  had  been  found. 

One  year  later  General  Dodge  returned  to  the 
spot  where  the  ridge  blended  into  the  plains  and  laid 
out  the  city  of  Cheyenne,  Wyo.  While  he  was  at 
work  the  Indians  raided  a  party  of  Mormon  emi- 
grants on  the  trail  over  which  the  general  had  just 
passed  and  killed  a  couple  of  men,  thus  enabling  the 
cemetery  of  the  new  town  to  be  started  without  delay. 

By  the  beginning  of  1867  the  Union  Pacific  was 
in  operation  to  a  point  three  hundred  and  five  miles 
west  of  Omaha.  The  completion  of  the  Northwest- 
ern to  Omaha,  in  December,  1866,  opened  up  a  line 
of  communication  wrhich  very  greatly  reduced  the 
cost  of  supplies. 

The  Union  Pacific  being  now  extended  to  a  point 
most  convenient  for  the  Indians,  all  the  tribes  of  the 
plains  united  their  forces  for  the  avowed  purpose  of 
exterminating  the  whites.  Fifteen  thousand  war- 
riors took  the  field,  devoting  especial  attention  to  the 
railroad. 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    245 

Everything  had  to  be  done  under  armed  guard. 
The  engineers  laid  out  the  line  within  musket-range 
of  a  strong  military  escort,  dividing  their  attention 
between  their  instruments  and  their  rifles.  Even 
then  numbers  of  them  were  killed  and  their  stock  run 
off  by  thousands. 

One  party  of  ten  men  was  "  jumped  "  by  Indians 
in  Wyoming.  Not  being  skilled  in  Indian  fighting, 
they  did  the  worst  thing  they  possibly  could  have 
done — they  undertook  to  conceal  themselves  in  a 
clump  of  sage-brush,  some  five  hundred  feet  in  diam- 
eter, which  was  commanded  by  a  little  bluff  at  a  dis- 
tance of  two  hundred  yards. 

The  sage-brush  afforded  no  protection,  and  simply 
provided  a  cover  under  which  the  Indians  could  creep 
up  on  them  without  risk  of  being  seen.  Whenever 
a  white  man  moved  or  made  a  sound  a  volley  of  bul- 
lets would  come  in  his  direction.  When  darkness 
came  three  white  men,  the  only  ones  left  alive,  crept 
from  that  sage-brush  and  contrived  to  reach  safety. 

Not  satisfied  with  murder  and  robbery,  the  Indians 
pulled  up  the  surveyors'  stakes  and  destroyed  them, 
so  that  much  of  the  work  had  to  be  done  over. 

At  first  the  Indians  had  not  known  what  to  make 
of  the  locomotive;  but  soon  they  gathered  courage  to 
try  to  stop  a  train  by  stretching  a  lariat  across  the 
track  held  by  thirty  braves  on  each  side.  After  it 
was  all  over  the  red  man  had  a  new  grievance  against 
his  pale-faced  oppressor,  which  he  sought  to  redress 
in  the  usual  way.  A  station  near  the  scene  of  the 
disastrous  hold-up  was  raided  next  evening. 

One  man  was  caught  before  he  could  reach  the 
shelter  of  the  building.  Him  the  Indians  took  to  a 


246  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

little  depression,  where  they  would  be  out  of  range 
of  the  guns  of  the  few  men  in  the  station,  staked  him 
out  on  the  ground,  built  a  small  fire  on  his  breast,  and 
then  gathered  about  it  to  warm  themselves  and  enjoy 
the  agonies  of  the  victim.  His  cries  could  be  heard 
by  the  men  in  the  station  for  several  hours,  but  they 
dared  not  venture  out  in  the  darkness  to  attempt  a 
rescue. 

The  Indians  soon  learned  how  to  wreck  trains. 
One  night  in  the  summer  of  1867  they  placed  an  ob- 
struction on  the  track  near  Plum  Creek,  Neb.,  and 
ditched  a  freight  train.  The  engineer,  fireman,  head 
brakeman,  and  conductor  were  killed.  The  hind 
man,  named  Johnson,  was  shot  in  the  back. 

The  bullet  knocked  him  down,  but  did  not  render 
him  unconscious.  He  had  presence  of  mind  enough 
not  to  utter  a  sound  or  move  a  muscle,  even  when  an 
Indian  seated  himself  astride  his  body  and  with  an 
extremely  dull  knife  proceeded,  with  great  delibera- 
tion, to  scalp  him.  This  operation  completed  to  the 
Indian's  entire  satisfaction,  he  stripped  Johnson  of 
everything  but  shirt  and  shoes  and  left  him. 

Next  morning  another  train  was  flagged  about  a 
mile  from  the  scene  of  the  wreck  by  a  hideous  object, 
which,  upon  examination,  proved  to  be  Johnson,  cov- 
ered from  crown  to  sole  with  blood  and  dirt.  His 
scalp  was  found  where  it  had  been  dropped  by  the 
Indian  in  the  excitement  of  plundering  the  train,  but 
it  wouldn't  grow  on  again,  although  an  obliging  sur- 
geon gave  it  every  encouragement. 

On  another  occasion  the  Indians  made  the  unfor- 
ate  mistake  of  sacking  a  train  when  General  Dodge 
was  close  at  hand.  The  General  was  on  his  way  back 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    247 

from  the  front  one  day,  when  he  was  notified  at  Plum 
Creek,  two  hundred  miles  west  of  Omaha,  that  the 
Indians  had  captured  a  freight  train  a  few  miles  east 
of  the  station.  Dodge's  private  car  was  merely  an 
arsenal  on  wheels,  with  enough  space  left  for  a  berth 
and  a  table,  which  served  alternately  as  a  dining  table 
and  a  desk.  On  the  train  were  some  twenty  men, 
who  had  had  enough  of  railroad  construction  on  a 
war  footing,  and  were  bound  for  civilization. 

On  hearing  of  the  capture  of  the  train,  General 
Dodge  immediately  called  for  volunteers  to  help  pun- 
ish the  Indians.  Every  man  on  the  train  immedi- 
ately fell  into  ranks  like  veterans,  as,  indeed,  they 
were.  The  engine  was  coupled  on  to  the  private  car, 
the  volunteers  hastily  climbed  aboard,  and  as  the  engi- 
neer coaxed  the  utmost  possible  speed  out  of  his  ma- 
chine, they  were  given  arms  and  instructions.  So 
quickly  was  the  scene  of  the  wreck  reached  that  the 
Indians  were  still  busy  with  the  plunder  without  a 
thought  of  danger. 

In  perfect  order  the  volunteers  sprang  to  the 
ground  and  deployed.  So  brilliantly  was  the  ma- 
neuver executed  that  few  of  the  red  wreckers  escaped. 

At  Sedgwick  the  Indians  made  an  exceptionally 
successful  raid,  capturing  the  entire  outfits  of  two 
sub-contractors  and  killing  such  a  large  number  of 
men  that  the  survivors  fled  to  civilization.  It  was 
only  after  considerable  difficulty  that  others  were  in- 
duced to  take  their  places. 

The  construction  gangs  fought  off  Indians  with 
one  hand  and  wielded  pick  and  shovel  with  the  other. 
No  one  will  ever  know  how  many  men  were  killed 
by  Indians  in  the  building  of  the  Union  Pacific. 


248  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Vice-president    Durant    didn't    like    to    have    such 
things  made  public. 

The  only  settlements  west  of  the  Missouri,  with  the 
exception  of  Denver  and  a  few  other  mining  camps 
in  Colorado  and  Nevada,  were  those  of  the  Mormons 
in  the  vicinity  of  Great  Salt  Lake.  Ogden  was  a 
village  of  a  few  hundred  inhabitants. 

An  exception  might  be  made  to  this  statement  if 
the  community  of  something  like  three  thousand  in- 
habitants living  in  tents  and  shacks  at  the  end  of  the 
track  could  be  called  a  settlement.  As  fast  as  the 
road  was  finished  to  a  convenient  point  it  was  oper- 
ated to  that  point,  which  then  became  temporary  head- 
quarters from  which  the  work  of  construction  was 
managed.  The  town  always  moved  with  headquar- 
ters, and  so  came  to  be  known  as  "  Hell-on- Wheels," 
and  the  title  was  appropriate. 

Aside  from  the  railroad  employees  and  a  few  store- 
keepers the  population  consisted  chiefly  of  gamblers 
and  desperadoes  and  the  very  worst  class  of  women. 
The  chief  article  of  commerce  was  vile  whisky,  and 
the  principal  industry  was  robbery,  either  thinly  dis- 
guised as  gambling,  or  by  more  elementary  methods 
whenever  convenient.  Only  by  the  frequent  appli- 
cation of  lynch  law  were  the  murders  kept  down  to  an 
average  of  one  a  day  the  greater  part  of  the  time. 

There  was  a  ceaseless  orgy  of  the  lowest  debauch- 
ery and  the  grossest  crime  in  this  Hell-on- Wheels 
that  has  left  a  stigma  which  will  last  as  long  as  the 
Union  Pacific  itself.  That  such  shameful  conditions 
are  not  necessarily  a  part  of  railroad  building  was 
conclusively  demonstrated  in  the  construction  of  the 
Canadian  Pacific. 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    249 

At  one  of  its  stops,  six  hundred  and  ninety-eight 
miles  west  of  Omaha,  in  August,  1868,  "  Hell-on- 
Wheels  "  assumed  the  dignity  of  a  "  city,"  which  was 
divided  into  five  wards  and  christened  "  Bent  on,"  in 
honor  of  the  Senator  who  had  taken  such  a  conspic- 
uous part  in  the  fight  on  Whitney's  project  for  a 
Pacific  railroad.  A  mayor  and  full  city  government 
were  elected,  and  ordinances  to  safeguard  the  public 
health  were  adopted.  Being  the  end  of  the  freight 
and  passenger  division,  and  the  beginning  of  the  con- 
struction division,  Benton  was  an  exceedingly  lively 
place.  Twice  a  day  enormous  trains  arrived  and  de- 
parted, and  stages  left  for  the  end  of  the  Central 
Pacific  track  and  other  points  in  Utah,  Montana,  and 
Idaho.  All  goods  for  the  front  and  for  points  on  the 
plains  and  in  the  mountains  had  to  be  reshipped. 

The  streets  were  beds  of  alkali  dust  eight  inches 
deep,  which  blinded  and  strangled  all  passers-by,  and 
floated  away  in  dense  irritating  clouds  to  settle  in 
dirty  white  drifts  on  the  wretched  tents  and  shanties. 
There  were  one  daily  paper,  five  dance  houses,  and 
twenty-three  saloons.  The  chief  public  resort  was 
known  as  "  The  Big  Tent,"  a  canvas  structure  a  hun- 
dred feet  long  and  forty  feet  wide,  at  one  side  of 
which  was  a  gorgeous  bar  lavishly  set  forth  with 
plate-glass  mirrors,  cut-glass  goblets,  glasses,  and  ice 
pitchers.  Brass  bands  brayed  continuously  day  and 
night,  while  monte,  faro,  roulette,  and  chuck-a-luck 
games  never  closed. 

When  railroad  headquarters  moved,  Benton  moved 
also.  In  a  few  weeks  not  a  shack  was  left  standing. 

While  the  Union  Pacific  was  struggling  with  un- 
compromising Nature,  bad  Indians,  and  worse  white 


250  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

men,  the  Central  Pacific  was  also  waging  a  great  con- 
test, though  of  a  totally  different  character,  against 
the  Storm  King  of  the  Sierras. 

To  build  a  railroad  through  mountains  where  the 
slope  is  one  foot  rise  in  each  foot  of  distance,  and 
where  winter  is  an  almost  continuous  series  of  snow- 
storms accompanied  by  high  winds,  is  no  trifling  mat- 
ter. To  cross  the  Sierras,  fifteen  tunnels  were 
driven  by  the  expenditure  of  a  million  dollars'  worth 
of  blasting-powder,  the  longest  being  1,659  feet. 
Work  on  the  tunnels  had  been  stopped  entirely  dur- 
ing the  winter  of  1865-1866. 

To  avoid  another  such  delay,  Engineer  John  R. 
Gilliss  kept  three  shifts  of  men  at  work  day  and  night 
on  the  approaches  to  the  tunnels  in  the  summer  of 
1866.  One  night  in  the  autumn  he  stumbled  over 
two  miles  of  rough  mountain  trail  and  laid  out  the 
east  end  of  tunnel  number  twelve  by  the  light  of  a 
bonfire.  Before  midnight  the  men  were  at  work. 

When  winter  began  the  headings  were  under- 
ground, so  that  the  work  could  go  on  uninterruptedly, 
though  it  was  necessary  to  dig  snow  tunnels  two  hun- 
dred feet  long  to  keep  the  entrances  open.  That 
winter  there  were  forty-four  snow-storms,  in  some  of 
which  ten  feet  of  snow  fell.  As  the  usual  tempera- 
ture was  about  thirty-two  degrees  above  zero,  the 
snow  was  wet  and  heavy. 

During  the  storms  the  wind  blew  so  violently  that 
the  drifting  snow  hid  a  warehouse  thirty  feet  from 
the  cabin  of  the  engineers.  One  man  was  lost  in  going 
a  short  distance  in  a  straight  line  between  rock  walls, 
and  came  in  exhausted.  In  running  lines  outside  it 
was  necessary  to  dig  deep  cuts  and  tunnels  in  the 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    251 

snow  to  get  at  the  original  transit  points.  Yet  the 
tunnel-headings  met  only  two  inches  out  of  alignment. 

All  summer  the  Central  Pacific  was  pushed  on  with 
a  force  of  ten  thousand  men,  principally  Chinese,  and 
one  thousand  three  hundred  teams.  By  December 
1,  1867,  all  the  tunnels  were  pierced,  and  trains  were 
running  across  the  summit  to  Truckee,  one  hundred 
and  forty  miles  east  of  Sacramento. 

The  spring  of  1868  found  the  two  companies  on 
equal  terms.  While  the  Central  Pacific  had  been 
crossing  the  Sierras  the  Union  Pacific  had  sur- 
mounted Evans  Pass,  the  highest  point  on  the  line,  at 
an  elevation  of  8,242  feet.  Both  had  ample  funds  at 
last,  and  both  were  almost  equally  distant  from  Mon- 
ument Point,  at  the  head  of  Great  Salt  Lake,  the 
Union  Pacific  being  522  miles  away  and  the  Central 
Pacific  545  miles. 

As  soon  as  the  weather  permitted  a  construction 
campaign  was  begun  which  has  never  yet  been 
equaled.  From  twenty  thousand  to  twenty-five 
thousand  men,  and  from  five  thousand  to  six  thou- 
sand teams  were  employed,  and  from  five  hundred  to 
six  hundred  tons  of  material  were  used  daily.  At  one 
time  the  Central  Pacific  had  no  -fewer  than  thirty  ves- 
sels loaded  with  supplies  at  sea,  on  the  long  voyage 
of  nineteen  thousand  miles  from  New  York  around 
the  Horn  to  San  Francisco.  Twenty-five  sawmills 
around  Truckee  worked  up  timber  for  the  use  of  the 
Central  Pacific,  while  a  dozen  mills  in  the  Black  Hills 
and  the  Rocky  Mountains  did  a  similar  work  for  the 
Union  Pacific. 

Money  was  no  object  now.  Speed,  not  economy, 
was  the  great  desideratum.  In  their  eagerness  to 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

earn  as  much  as  possible  of  the  subsidy  the  rival  com- 
panies pushed  their  grades  ahead  until  they  over- 
lapped more  than  two  hundred  miles.  In  an  attempt 
to  get  beyond  Promontory  Point,  where  there  was  a 
section  of  the  most  intricate  alignment,  heaviest 
grades,  and  sharpest  curves  on  the  entire  line,  the 
Union  Pacific  took  the  work  out  of  the  contractors' 
hands  and  put  on  day  and  night  shifts  to  finish  the 
job  in  a  hurry. 

The  result  was  that  at  the  finish  it  cost  $618,000  to 
move  178,000  cubic  yards  of  material,  whereas  it  had 
cost  but  $623,000  to  move  800,000  yards  under  the 
contract  system.  The  track-layers  followed  the 
graders  as  closely  as  the  delivery  of  material  would 
permit.  In  1867  the  Union  Pacific  laid  240  miles  of 
track;  in  1868,  425  miles,  and  to  May  10,  1869,  when 
the  tracks  met,  125  miles.  The  Central  Pacific  laid 
94  miles  through  the  mountains  in  1867,  363  miles  in 
1868,  and  186  miles  to  May  10,  1869. 

General  Jack  S.  Casement  and  his  brother,  D.  C. 
Casement,  directed  the  Union  Pacific  forces,  which 
were  handled  like  an  army.  In  fact,  the  force  on  the 
Union  Pacific  was  largely  composed  of  former  army 
men.  Operations  partook  somewhat  of  the  nature  of 
military  maneuvers.  The  men  marched  to  work  to 
beat  of  drums,  with  outposts  as  a  precaution  against 
surprises  by  Indians.  As  expressed  in  one  of  the 
popular  songs  of  the  day,  it  was : 

"  Then  drill,  my  Paddies,  drill ; 

Drill,  my  heroes,  drill; 

Drill  all  day, 

No  sugar  in  your  tay, 

Worldn'  on  the  U.  P.  Railway." 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    253 

The  engineers  were  the  skirmishers,  and  the  tie- 
makers,  of  whom  there  were  fifteen  hundred  employed 
in  the  mountains,  were  the  advance  guard.  The  ties 
had  to  be  sent  to  the  railroad  in  large  wagon  trains, 
under  strong  military  escort.  Two  thousand  graders 
prepared  the  line.  Back  of  these  came  the  tie-layers. 
Bridges  were  framed  and  the  pieces  numbered  at  the 
mills,  ready  to  be  put  together  immediately  on  reach- 
ing the  front. 

Twenty  miles  back  of  the  tie-layers  were  the  con- 
struction trains,  and  still  back  of  these  half  a  dozen 
miles  were  the  supply  trains.  Cars  were  loaded  with 
the  proper  proportion  of  rails,  chairs,  bolts,  and 
spikes,  so  that  there  should  be  no  delay  in  putting 
down  the  iron. 

First  of  all  was  the  boarding  train  of  rough  sleep- 
ing, kitchen,  dining,  and  office  cars,  that  the  men 
might  lose  no  time  between  their  meals  and  their  work. 
The  boarding  train  would  be  pushed  up  to  the  end  of 
the  track  while  a  supply  train  was  run  up  behind  it 
and  unloaded.  Then  the  boarding  train  would  be 
pulled  back,  to  allow  the  material  to  be  loaded  on 
little  dump-carts,  which  two  horses  would  take  to 
the  front  at  a  gallop. 

Arriving  there,  four  men  on  each  side  would  seize 
the  rails,  run  forward,  and  drop  them  in  place,  in  an 
average  time  of  thirty  seconds  to  the  rail.  A  gang 
following  them  would  half  drive  eight  spikes  to  the 
rail  and  place  the  bolts.  A  second  gang  drove  home 
the  spikes  and  put  in  the  rest  with  an  average  of 
three  blows  of  the  sledge  to  each  spike  and  tightened 
the  nuts  on  the  bolts. 

Lastly  came  the  surfacing  gang,  which  threw  in  the 


254  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

ballast,  leveled  the  track,  and  tamped  the  ties  in 
place.  On  many  a  day  the  construction  gangs  of  the 
two  companies  laid  more  miles  of  track  than  an  ox 
team  averaged  in  a  day's  travel  on  the  old  overland 
trail.  Such  performances  as  these  attracted  the  at- 
tention of  the  newspapers  in  the  East,  which  began  to 
send  their  star  correspondents  to  the  front  and  to  an- 
nounce the  number  of  miles  of  track  laid  each  day,  as 
baseball  scores  are  announced  nowadays. 

All  this  notoriety  spurred  the  rival  construction 
gangs  to  renewed  exertions  and  made  them  boastful. 
One  day  the  Union  Pacific  laid  six  miles  of  track. 
The  Central  Pacific  thereupon  laid  seven  miles  in  one 
day.  Upon  hearing  of  this  feat  the  Union  Pacific 
laid  seven  and  a  half  miles. 

The  Central  Pacific  authorities  declared  that  their 
men  could  lay  ten  miles  in  one  working  day  if  they 
wanted  to.  Vice-president  Durant,  of  the  Union 
Pacific,  offered  to  bet  ten  thousand  dollars  that  they 
couldn't  do  it.  The  money  was  covered,  and  April 
29,  1869,  was  set  as  the  day  for  the  race. 

A  large  party  of  distinguished  guests  assembled  to 
see  the  bet  decided.  Four  thousand  men,  trained  by 
the  discipline  of  four  years  to  the  precision  of  a  ma- 
chine, began  their  mighty  task  on  the  stroke  of  seven 
o'clock.  Most  of  the  working  force  was  composed 
of  Chinamen,  but  the  Chinamen  were  not  heavy 
enough  to  lay  the  rails. 

For  this  work  there  were  eight  stalwart  Irishmen, 
whose  names  have  been  handed  down  to  posterity — 
Michael  Shay,  Pat  Joyce,  Thomas  Daly,  Mike  Ken- 
nedy, Fred  McNamara,  Ed  Killeen,  Mike  Sullivan, 
and  George  Wyatt.  They  handled  the  rails  at  the 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    255 

rate  of  one  minute  forty-seven  and  a  half  seconds  to 
each  two  hundred  and  forty  feet. 

In  six  hours  they  had  laid  eight  miles  of  track,  so 
they  nailed  a  board  with  the  word  "  Victory  "  on  it 
to  a  stake,  and  stopped  for  dinner  on  the  boarding 
train,  which  was  now  run  up. 

After  the  usual  noon  rest  of  one  hour,  work  was  re- 
sumed. At  exactly  7  P.M.  ten  miles  and  two  hundred 
feet  of  track  had  been  laid.  To  do  this  required  the 
bringing  up  and  placing  in  position  of  25,800  ties, 
3,520  rails  averaging  560  pounds  each,  55,000  spikes, 
7,040  plates,  and  14,080  bolts,  a  total  weight  of 
4,362,000  pounds. 

Durant  acknowledged  himself  ten  thousand  dollars 
poorer  and  returned  to  his  own  camp.  Then,  to 
prove  that  the  job  was  well  done,  Campbell,  the 
boarding  boss,  got  on  the  locomotive  and  ran  the 
heavy  train  back  over  the  ten  miles  of  newly  laid 
track  in  forty  minutes. 

Ten  days  after  this  great  track-laying  feat, 
which  has  never  been  equaled,  all  was  ready  for  the 
driving  of  the  last  spike  which  would  unite  the  two 
roads,  making  a  continuous  line  from  the  Missouri 
River  to  San  Francisco  Bay. 

When  the  two  roads  met  the  grades  overlapped 
some  eighty  miles.  The  Union  Pacific  had  wasted  a 
million  dollars  in  its  reckless  race  to  seize  the  lion's 
share  of  the  fat  government  subsidy.  The  Central 
Pacific  was  too  crafty  for  its  rival,  for  it  had  induced 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  advance  it  two- 
thirds  of  the  bond  subsidy  on  its  graded  line  to  Echo 
Summit,  forty  miles  east  of  Ogden,  before  the  track 
was  completed  to  Promontory  Point,  while  the  Union 


256  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Pacific  had  actually  laid  its  rails  to  Ogden.  There 
was  a  pretty  row  over  this  incident,  which  waxed  so 
virulent  that  Congress  interfered;  but  the  companies 
concluded  it  would  be  the  better  part  of  discretion  to 
compromise,  which  they  did;  and  Congress  ratified 
the  agreement  by  a  joint  resolution  which  was 
adopted  April  10,  1869. 

A  space  of  a  hundred  feet  had  been  left  between  the 
ends  of  the  two  tracks  on  May  9,  1869.  Early  on 
the  morning  of  the  following  day  Leland  Stanford 
and  his  party  arrived  at  the  end  of  the  Central  Pacific 
track  in  a  special  train  drawn  by  the  locomotive 
"  Jupiter."  Soon  after  the  Union  Pacific  official 
train,  drawn  by  engine  No.  116,  bringing  Vice-presi- 
dent Durant,  Directors  Dillon,  Duff,  and  others, 
arrived. 

A  strangely  mixed  crowd  of  Mormon  saints,  Mexi- 
cans, Indians,  Chinese,  negroes,  Irish  laborers,  army 
officers  and  their  wives,  Eastern  bankers,  bull  whack- 
ers, muleskinners,  frontiersmen,  and  camp  followers 
had  assembled  to  watch  the  proceedings  with  varying 
degrees  of  interest,  curiosity,  or  ennui.  Mrs.  S.  W. 
Strowbridge,  wife  of  the  Central  Pacific's  superin- 
tendent of  construction,  who,  by  the  enthusiastic  in- 
terest she  had  taken  in  her  husband's  work,  had 
earned  the  title  of  "  Heroine  of  the  Central  Pacific," 
was  given  a  place  of  honor. 

After  the  Rev.  Dr.  Todd,  of  Massachusetts,  had 
offered  prayer,  a  Chinaman  carefully  smoothed  the 
spot  on  which  the  last  tie  was  to  be  laid.  The  tie, 
of  California  laurel,  beautifully  polished,  was  brought 
up  by  the  two  superintendents  of  construction,  Strow- 
bridge, of  the  Central,  and  Reed,  of  the  Union  Pa- 


FIRST  TRANSCONTINENTAL  RAILROAD    257 

cific.     In  the  center  of  the  tie  was  a  silver  plate  bear- 
ing this  inscription: 


THE  LAST  TIE 

LAID  IN  THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  PACIFIC 
RAILROAD,   MAY  10, 


A  spike  of  gold,  silver,  and  iron  from  Arizona,  and 
one  of  silver  from  Nevada  were  handed  to  Durant, 
of  the  Union  Pacific,  who  stood  on  the  south  side  of 
the  track.  When  he  had  driven  these  Dr.  Harkness 
handed  the  last  spike,  of  California  gold,  and  a  silver 
sledge  to  Leland  Stanford. 

Then,  at  12.45  P.M.,,  the  man  who  six  years  before, 
amid  the  jeers  of  a  knot  of  street  loafers  in  Sacra- 
mento, had  tossed  the  first  shovelful  of  sand  turned 
in  the  building  of  the  first  transcontinental  railroad, 
drove  the  last  spike  which  completed  that  splendid 
achievement. 

The  motley  crowd  of  six  hundred  which  saw  the 
blows  struck  was  but  an  insignificant  part  of  the  audi- 
ence which  participated  in  the  ceremony.  Through 
connections  between  the  sledge  and  the  telegraph 
wires  the  whole  Nation  heard  the  strokes  that  drove 
home  the  last  spike.  Cannon  boomed  and  bells  rang 
out  in  response  to  those  taps  in  every  city  in  the  land. 
At  Chicago  there  was  a  procession  four  miles  long 
and  an  address  by  Vice-president  Colfax.  At  New 
York  the  mayor  ordered  a  salute  of  one  hundred 
guns,  and  a  "  Te  Deum "  was  chanted  in  Trinity 
Church  while  the  chimes  pealed  forth  the  solemn 
notes  of  the  "  Doxology." 

San  Francisco  was  delirious  with  joy.     The  cele- 


258  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

bration  began  there  on  May  8  and  continued  uninter- 
ruptedly until  the  night  of  the  10th.  The  buildings 
and  the  shipping  in  the  harbor  were  decked  with  flags 
and  bunting,  cannon  boomed,  bells  rang,  and  whistles 
tooted  for  hours ;  there  were  speeches  and  processions, 
and  every  one  kept  open  house  for  all  comers. 

The  completion  of  the  Pacific  railroads  did  more 
than  anything  else  to  put  an  end  to  organized  out- 
lawry in  the  West,  and  to  curb  hostile  Indians,  who 
up  to  that  time  had  cost  the  government  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars  each  to  kill.  It  developed  a  traffic 
which  earned  for  the  Central  Pacific  alone,  in  the 
first  three  months,  $1,703,000.  Also,  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Union  Pacific  netted  its  builders  the  neat 
profit  of  $16,710,432,  or  twenty-seven  per  cent  on  the 
cost.  Finally,  it  created  one  of  the  greatest  scandals 
this  country  has  known  when  the  people  who  had 
lacked  the  nerve  to  invest  their  money  in  the  enter- 
prise undertook  to  get  even  with  the  men  who  had 
risked  and  won. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL 

IF  the  uses  of  adversity  are  as  sweet  as  the  proverb 
makes  them  out  to  be,  then  the  corporate  exist- 
ence of  the  Atchison,  Topeka  and  Santa  Fe  Railway 
Company  has  been  one  long  rapture.  For  if  there  is 
any  conceivable  form  of  trouble  which  can  befall  a 
railroad  that  has  not  beset  the  Santa  Fe,  no  one  who 
was  ever  connected  with  the  company  has  been  able  to 
name  it.  Man  and  Nature  separately  and  in  combi- 
nation seem  to  have  done  their  honest  best  to  prevent 
the  development  of  the  road. 

The  fact  that  in  the  face  of  all  these  difficulties  it 
has  grown  into  a  vast  system  of  ten  thousand  miles, 
tapping  the  chief  centers  of  traffic  from  the  Great 
Lakes  to  the  Gulf  and  the  Pacific,  is  an  eloquent 
tribute  to  the  genius  of  its  builders. 

The  builders  of  the  Santa  Fe  were  a  remarkable 
lot  of  men,  as,  indeed,  they  had  need  to  be.  Their 
talents  covered  a  wide  range,  for  the  obstacles  they 
had  to  overcome  ran  all  the  way  from  poverty  and 
prejudice  to  military  strategy.  For,  be  it  known, 
the  Santa  Fe  and  its  adversary,  the  Denver  and  Rio 
Grande,  enjoy  the  unique  distinction  of  being  the  only 
railroads  that  ever  levied  war  and  maintained  armies 
in  the  field. 

First  of  these  builders,  in  point  of  ability  as  well 
as  chronologically,  was  Colonel  Cyrus  K.  Holliday, 

359 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

the  dreamer,  the  enthusiast,  who  saw  before  any  other 
man  could  the  golden  future  of  the  great  Southwest. 
Colonel  Holliday  was  one  of  the  founders  of  Topeka. 
As  early  as  1859  his  vision  of  a  transcontinental  rail- 
road following  the  old  Santa  Fe  trail  into  the  South- 
west took  form.  As  a  member  of  the  Kansas  Terri- 
torial Senate  he  secured  a  charter  for  his  project. 
That  was  the  only  easy  step  in  the  building  of  the 
Santa  Fe. 

For  the  next  nine  years  Colonel  Holliday  wore  out 
his  shoes  tramping  from  office  to  office  of  Eastern 
capitalists  in  quest  of  means  to  finance  his  vision. 
He  reaped  a  rich  harvest  of  rebuffs  and  ridicule,  but 
no  money.  But  he  had  the  true  spirit  of  the  pioneer; 
that  is,  he  never  knew  when  he  was  defeated. 

He  kept  at  it  until,  in  1867,  George  K.  Beach,  of 
New  York,  was  induced  to  enter  into  a  contract  to 
build  the  entire  road  as  then  planned.  But  Beach 
lacked  the  courage  to  carry  out  the  contract,  so  he 
assigned  it  to  T.  J.  Peter,  of  Cincinnati. 

Peter  also  developed  alarming  symptoms  of  cold 
feet  when  he  went  to  Kansas  to  look  the  ground  over, 
and  realized  from  observation  that  the  Southwest 
was  then  inhabited  almost  entirely  by  buffalo,  prairie- 
dogs,  and  Indians,  whose  principal  industry  was  rais- 
ing hair.  On  reflection,  however,  it  occurred  to  Mr. 
Peter  that  a  country  which  could  support  countless 
millions  of  buffalo  was  capable  of  supporting  civilized 
men  also. 

So,  the  contracting  firm  of  Dodge,  Lord  &  Co.,  of 
Cincinnati,  was  organized,  which  built  the  first  thou- 
sand miles  of  the  road.  Twenty-eight  miles  were 
built  in  1869  between  Topeka  and  Burlingame,  Kan. 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         261 

Once  the  beginning  was  made,  the  end  of  the  track 
crept  steadily  westward.  In  1863  Congress  granted 
three  million  acres  of  land  in  Kansas  to  aid  in  the 
building  of  the  Santa  Fe  Railway,  which  was  to  be- 
come the  property  of  the  road  only  on  condition  that 
it  was  completed  to  the  Colorado  line  within  ten  years. 

Congress  was  as  free  with  land  grants  then  as  leg- 
islatures were  with  charters. 

Probably  there  never  again  will  be  towns  as  tough 
as  those  which  punctuated  the  progress  of  the  Santa 
Fe  across  Kansas.  Law  there  was  none,  and  human 
life  was  lightly  esteemed. 

Yet,  after  all,  the  men  killed  were  nearly  always 
those  who  needed  killing.  Those  who  attended  to 
their  own  business  were  usually  permitted  to  do  so  in 
peace. 

At  Newton,  where  the  road  crossed  the  Texas  cat- 
tle trail,  at  Abilene,  and  at  other  points  it  was  consid- 
ered an  exquisite  bit  of  humor  for  a  party  of  drunken 
cowboys  to  ride  their  cayuses  up  and  down  the  wooden 
sidewalks  at  full  gallop,  yelling  at  every  jump,  cre- 
ating a  deafening  clatter,  the  chorus  to  which  was  a 
fusillade  of  revolver  shots. 

If  any  man  got  in  the  way  of  the  bullets,  that  was 
his  affair.  There  were  more  saloons  than  anything 
else,  and  each  saloon  had  a  dance-hall  and  a  gam- 
bling outfit  in  connection.  Everything  was  wide 
open — day,  night,  and  Sunday. 

But  for  all-around  cussedness  the  palm  must  be 
awarded  to  Dodge  City,  which  was  founded  in  1872, 
on  the  advent  of  the  Santa  Fe.  This  place  was  in  the 
very  heart  of  the  buffalo  country.  The  face  of  the 
earth  fairly  swarmed  with  the  huge  creatures. 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

A  good  hunter  could  make  one  hundred  dollars  a 
day  slaughtering  them.  Every  one  had  money  to 
throw  at  the  birds.  A  paper  of  pins,  a  shave,  or  a 
drink  cost  twenty-five  cents.  No  smaller  coin  was 
recognized. 

But  even  in  Dodge  City  there  came,  by  and  by, 
to  be  a  limit  to  the  excesses  that  could  be  committed 
with  impunity.  Murder  was  a  trivial  incident  of 
every-day  life  for  a  time.  But  when  Bill  McGeachie 
began  to  swagger  from  barroom  to  barroom  boasting, 
with  loud  oaths,  that  he  had  a  jury  in  hell,  meaning 
that  he  had  sent  a  dozen  men  to  the  nether  world  with 
his  own  pistol,  the  more  respectable  part  of  the  com- 
munity thought  it  would  be  a  nice  thing  to  send  Bill 
before  his  jury. 

So,  there  was  a  quiet  little  necktie  party  one  even- 
ing, at  which  Bill  was  the  star  guest.  After  that 
things  began  to  simmer  down  in  Dodge. 

The  Santa  Fe  was  fixed  as  a  deadline,  to  the  north 
of  which  bad  men  must  not  venture.  On  the  south 
side,  gamblers  and  all  the  scum  of  that  wild  civiliza- 
tion rioted  for  a  long  time  afterward.  On  the  north 
side,  considerable  pains  were  taken  to  insure  freedom 
from  molestation  for  the  peaceably  inclined. 

A  woman  was  treated  with  chivalry  decidedly 
militant.  If  a  drunken  man  accidentally  jostled  a 
woman  he  was  promptly  knocked  down  by  the  nearest 
bystander,  with  a  profane  adjuration  to  be  more  po- 
lite in  future. 

The  first  calaboose  in  Dodge  was  a  well  fifteen 
feet  deep,  into  which  drunks  were  lowered  until  they 
sobered  off.  Sometimes  this  unique  prison  contained 
half  a  dozen  inmates. 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         263 

The  Santa  Fe  Railway  conducted  its  business  at 
Dodge  City  in  a  box-car  for  a  long  time,  and  it  was  a 
very  flourishing  business,  too.  Dozens  of  carloads 
of  buffalo  hides  and  meat  were  shipped  out  daily  from 
the  very  beginning,  and  other  dozens  of  carloads  of 
merchandise  came  in  to  be  distributed  throughout  the 
Southwest  by  the  long  wagon  trains  which  crowded 
the  streets. 

As  an  indication  of  the  extent  of  the  business  done 
in  the  canvas  and  clapboard  town  at  the  end  of  the 
track,  it  may  be  noted  that  Charles  Roth  &  Co.,  of 
Dodge  City,  a  few  weeks  after  the  town  came  into 
existence,  ordered  by  wire  two  hundred  cases  of  bak- 
ing powder  from  Long  Brothers,  of  Kansas  City. 

The  latter  firm,  thinking  there  must  be  some  mis- 
take, inquired  if  the  Dodge  people  really  meant  two 
hundred  cases. 

Back  the  answer  came :  "  Yes ;  double  the  order 
and  rush  it." 

The  public  sense  of  humor  was  even  more  fully 
developed  at  Dodge  than  elsewhere.  Baiting  tender- 
feet  was  a  very  common  form  of  diversion  for  a  time. 
Many  a  snipe  hunt  was  organized,  in  which  the  cred- 
ulous one  from  the  East  was  inveigled  out  to  a  swamp 
to  hold  a  bag  all  night,  waiting  for  his  new-found 
friends  to  drive  the  snipe  into  it,  while  these  same 
friends  slipped  quietly  back  to  their  favorite  barroom, 
where  they  went  into  ecstasies  of  mirth  while  they 
waited  for  the  bag-holder  to  realize  that  he  had  been 
sold. 

The  favorite  joke,  though,  was  an  Indian  hunt. 
The  tenderfoot  would  be  induced  to  go  out  on  a  buf- 
falo hunt  with  half  a  dozen  local  wits,  who  would  ride 


£64  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

by  his  side  and  fill  his  receptive  mind  with  blood- 
curdling accounts  of  Indian  atrocities  until  they 
caught  sight  of  a  party  dressed  in  Indian  finery  which 
had  ridden  out  ahead.  The  supposed  Indians  would 
ride  toward  the  hunters,  emitting  the  most  frightful 
whoops  of  which  they  were  capable. 

At  this  the  tenderfoot  would  turn  and  ride  for  his 
life  back  to  the  town,  to  the  gratification  of  the  jokers. 
At  last,  however,  the  jokers  picked  out  the  wrong 
tenderfoot. 

When  the  time  came  for  him  to  exhibit  abject  fear, 
instead  of  carrying  out  his  part  of  the  program  he 
held  his  base  and  began  pumping  lead  into  the  make- 
believe  Indians  as  fast  as  his  rifle  would  work.  While 
none  of  the  wounds  he  inflicted  were  fatal,  they  were 
numerous  enough  and  serious  enough  to  discourage 
that  form  of  humor  thereafter. 

At  Dodge  there  was  an  Irish  justice  of  the  peace 
named  Flannery.  Two  Irish  section  hands  on  the 
Santa  Fe  got  into  a  quarrel.  One  attacked  the  other 
with  a  spike-maul,  and  was  promptly  killed  by  his 
intended  victim  with  a  shovel. 

Duly  penitent,  the  survivor  surrendered  himself 
to  the  authorities.  An  investigation  showed  that  he 
had  acted  in  self-defense.  Thereupon  he  was  ar- 
raigned before  Mr.  Justice  Flannery. 

"  Guilty  or  not  guilty?  "  he  was  asked. 

"  Guilty,  yer  onner." 

"  Shut  your  dom  mouth.  Ye  don't  know  what 
ye're  talkin'  about.  I  discha-arge  ye  for  want  av 
ividence,"  roared  the  justice. 

The  completion  of  the  road  to  the  Colorado  line,  at 
the  close  of  1872,  marked  the  end  of  the  first  period 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         265 

in  the  Santa  Fe  history.  The  great  problem  to  be 
solved  in  this  first  period  was  to  inspire  capitalists 
with  faith  enough  in  the  future  of  the  West  to  ad- 
vance money  to  build  the  road  and  earn  the  valuable 
land  grant. 

The  next  hard  nut  to  crack  was  to  convert  the  land 
grants  into  cash,  which  was  merely  incidental  to  cre- 
ating traffic  that  would  support  the  road  by  peopling 
the  wilderness.  This  difficult  task  fell  to  A.  E. 
Touzalin,  who  at  the  age  of  thirty-three  was  called 
to  fill  the  position  of  general  passenger  agent,  general 
freight  agent,  land  commissioner,  and  a  few  other 
things. 

He  was  a  terrific  worker.  Soon  after  he  took  hold 
things  began  to  happen  in  Kansas.  Mr.  Touzalin 
was  the  originator  of  many  of  the  modern  methods  of 
railroad  development  work.  Booklets  were  prepared 
and  distributed,  large  advertising  contracts  placed, 
and  an  army  of  land  agents  was  organized. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  features  of  this  work 
was  that  furnished  by  C.  B.  Schmidt,  who  was  ap- 
pointed foreign  immigration  agent.  Mr.  Schmidt 
was  the  son  of  the  architect  to  the  King  of  Saxony, 
who  had  wandered  out  to  Kansas  and  had  taken  up 
newspaper  work.  His  first  trip  to  secure  immigrants 
was  to  Russia,  after  the  Mennonites,  who  were  some- 
thing like  the  Quakers. 

The  Russian  government  heard  of  Mr.  Schmidt's 
mission,  and  promptly  sent  a  numerous  delegation 
from  the  police  department  with  a  pressing  invitation 
to  him  to  get  out  and  stay  out.  But  by  fast  driving 
and  night  journeys,  enlivened  by  some  rather  exciting 
adventures,  he  contrived  to  elude  the  police  and  do  his 


266  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

work  so  well  that  he  was  followed  to  Kansas,  in  1875, 
by  a  first  detachment  of  one  thousand  nine  hundred 
Mennonites,  who  brought  two  million  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars  in  gold  with  them. 

The  call  of  this  entire  body  of  men,  women,  and 
children  in  their  picturesque  costumes  on  the  Gov- 
ernor at  Topeka  is  one  of  the  spectacular  incidents 
in  the  history  of  the  State. 

The  energy  and  originality  displayed  in  this  coloni- 
zation work  disposed  of  the  entire  land  grant  in  a  few 
years,  at  an  average  price  of  four  dollars  and  seventy- 
one  cents  an  acre,  with  expenses  and  commissions  av- 
eraging eighty-four  cents  an  acre.  Of  course,  gov- 
ernment land  tributary  to  the  railroad  was  also  settled 
at  the  same  time,  so  that  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
events  the  faith  of  Cyrus  K.  Holliday  and  his  co- 
laborers  would  have  been  abundantly  justified  in  a 
heavy  volume  of  traffic. 

But  there  were  drawbacks  which  no  man  could  fore- 
see. One  of  these  was  the  great  grasshopper  raid  of 
1874.  No  man  who  has  never  seen  a  grasshopper 
raid  can  form  any  conception  of  what  it  is  like.  For 
three  days  the  flight  of  the  insects  spread  a  haze  over 
the  sun  like  smoke  from  a  forest  fire.  They  settled 
down  until  they  covered  the  face  of  the  earth. 

They  flew  up  in  such  countless  swarms  against  the 
noses,  eyes,  ears,  and  bodies  of  horses  that  they  ran 
away,  and  they  covered  the  railroads  so  thick  that  the 
wheels  ground  them  into  a  slimy  pulp  in  which  the 
drivers  spun  impotently  around  while  trains  stood 
still.  What  was  more  serious,  the  grasshoppers  ate 
every  green  thing  within  twenty-four  hours  after  their 
arrival,  leaving  the  new  settlers  face  to  face  with 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         267 

famine.  Many  colonists  left  the  country  never  to 
return. 

That  grasshopper  year  was  a  severe  blow  to  Kan- 
sas, and  an  even  more  serious  one  for  the  struggling 
Santa  Fe  Railway,  which  started  from  nowhere  and 
also  ended  there.  The  earnings  of  the  five  hundred 
and  eight  miles  in  the  grasshopper  year  were  two 
thousand  four  hundred  and  sixty-two  dollars  a  mile. 
But  a  worse  setback  was  experienced  in  the  drought 
of  1879-1880.  Destitute  settlers  left  the  country  by 
thousands,  carried  free  by  the  railroads.  Those  who 
remained  had  to  be  supplied  with  free  seed  wheat  and 
corn  by  the  railroads.  Railroad  earnings  went  down 
like  mercury  in  a  blizzard. 

Under  these  pleasant  conditions,  Thomas  Nicker- 
son  undertook,  as  president  of  the  Santa  Fe,  the  sim- 
ple task  of  extending  the  road.  He  must  have  been 
a  wonder,  for  under  such  discouraging  circumstances 
he  raised  the  necessary  money  to  push  the  road  stead- 
ily to  the  westward  for  six  years,  from  1874  to  1880. 
Mr.  Nickerson's  genius  was  solely  as  a  financier. 

Nevertheless,  he  was  immensely  popular  with  the 
men.  He  never  felt  it  necessary  to  put  on  any  frills. 
When  he  went  out  on  a  tour  of  inspection  he  didn't 
need  a  private  car.  He  just  swung  himself  aboard 
the  little  red  caboose  at  the  tail  end  of  a  way  freight 
with  his  lunch  wrapped  in  a  newspaper,  in  his  coat 
pocket,  and  chummed  with  the  crew. 

Stories  about  these  trips  in  the  little  red  caboose 
reached  the  ears  of  the  investing  public,  and  pro- 
foundly impressed  all  hearers  with  the  rigid  economy 
of  the  Nickerson  regime,  thus  stimulating  the  droop- 
ing price  of  stock. 


268  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

The  latter  part  of  Mr.  Nickerson's  administration 
was  not  marked  by  that  serene  repose  which  is  sup- 
posed to  be  agreeable  to  financiers.  When  the  road 
got  into  Colorado  it  also  got  into  an  entirely  new  set 
of  difficulties.  William  B.  Strong,  a  young  man 
who  had  been  brought  up  in  the  way  he  should  go  on 
the  Burlington  road,  was  made  vice-president  and 
general  manager. 

Now,  Mr.  Strong  was  the  antithesis  of  Mr.  Nick- 
erson  in  temperament,  taste,  and  training.  Strong 
was  a  cyclone  which  never  ran  down,  to  whom  strife, 
difficulty,  and  discouragement  were  the  breath  of  life. 
Whereas  Nickerson  maneuvered  by  the  gentle  arts 
of  diplomacy,  Strong  greatly  preferred,  figuratively 
speaking,  to  knock  his  adversary  down  first  and  argue 
with  him  afterward. 

The  result  was  that  Nickerson  was  obliged  to 
spend  a  good  deal  of  time  roosting  on  the  safety-valve 
of  Strong's  enthusiasm  when  he  would  have  preferred 
a  more  congenial  occupation,  while  Strong  expended 
a  great  deal  of  nerve  force  in  fretting  because  he  was 
not  permitted  to  tear  the  Rocky  Mountains  up  by  the 
roots. 

Events  seem  to  demonstrate  that  a  judicious  blend- 
ing of  these  diverse  temperaments  and  talents  was 
exactly  what  was  needed  to  work  out  the  destiny 
of  the  Santa  Fe.  Unfortunately,  the  management 
erred  at  first  regarding  what  that  destiny  was  to  be. 

The  Santa  Fe  people  had  been  under  the  impres- 
sion that  they  were  to  have  Colorado  for  their  own. 
Leadville's  palmy  days  were  beginning,  and,  in  fact, 
the  whole  State  held  out  alluring  promise  of  rich  traf- 
fic. But  Nature,  most  unfortunately,  had  created 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL 

the  Rocky  Mountains  without  regard  to  the  limita- 
tions of  railroad  engineering. 

There  is  only  one  way  through  the  front  range  near 
enough  to  be  of  use  to  the  Santa  Fe,  and  that  is  a 
mere  crack  in  the  granite  something  less  than  three 
thousand  feet  deep,  with  sides  so  straight  up  and 
down  that  standing  at  the  bottom  one  can  see  the 
stars  at  noonday  as  from  the  bottom  of  a  well. 

Through  this  crack  roars  a  mountain  torrent  which 
becomes  the  Arkansas  River.  Several  thousand  dol- 
lars had  to  be  expended  in  blasting  footholds  in  this 
granite  fissure  before  the  engineers  could  be  sure  they 
could  find  room  to  squeeze  a  line  of  rails  through. 

The  Santa  Fe  prepared  to  build  through  this  tre- 
mendous chasm  regardless  of  the  fact  that  the  Den- 
ver and  Rio  Grande  Railroad  Company  had  been 
organized  some  years  before  to  do  this  very  thing,  and 
had  made  a  survey  through  the  canon,  but  had 
been  prevented  by  their  poverty  from  building.  The 
Denver  and  Rio  Grande  then  had  less  than  four  hun- 
dred miles  of  narrow-gauge  road  in  operation. 

At  the  same  time  the  Santa  Fe  prepared  to  con- 
tinue on  toward  the  Pacific  coast  by  way  of  Raton 
Pass,  which  the  Denver  and  Rio  Grande  also  had 
planned  to  use  in  its  business. 

It  is  a  pretty  well  established  fact  that  two  mate- 
rial bodies  cannot  occupy  the  same  position  in  space 
at  the  same  time.  When  the  bodies  which  attempt 
this  impossible  feat  happen  to  be  as  substantial  as 
railroads,  under  the  protection  of  numerous  guards 
of  determined  Western  men  whose  religion  is  to  shoot 
before  the  other  fellow  does,  interesting  developments 
may  be  looked  for. 


270  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

As  a  preliminary  to  the  extension  through  New 
Mexico,  Mr.  Strong  was  sent  to  Santa  Fe  to  get  the 
necessary  legislation  and  whatever  financial  aid  could 
be  obtained  from  the  Mexicans,  as  his  first  task  after 
joining  the  Santa  Fe  Railroad,  at  the  close  of  1877. 
On  reaching  the  Territorial  capital  he  found  that  the 
Southern  Pacific  had  thoughtfully  endeavored,  a  few 
days  before,  to  save  him  the  work  and  worry  of  build- 
ing a  railroad  through  the  lonely  mountains  by  secur- 
ing the  passage  of  a  certain  law. 

This  law  provided  that  a  majority  of  any  board  of 
directors  operating  a  railroad  should  be  residents  of 
the  Territory,  that  they  must  have  ten  per  cent  of  the 
cost  of  construction  on  hand  before  beginning  work, 
and  there  were  other  interesting  details  that  would 
make  it  impossible  for  the  Santa  Fe  to  raise  money 
to  build  five  hundred  miles  through  that  remote  re- 
gion. Moreover,  the  Mexican  natives  were  decid- 
edly hostile  to  the  proposed  American  invasion. 

But  the  Southern  Pacific  forces  had  made  a  fatal 
error.  They  had  neglected  to  insert  in  their  measure 
a  clause  repealing  the  old  law  or  providing  that  the 
new  should  take  immediate  effect.  The  old  law  was 
therefore  still  in  force. 

With  characteristic  energy,  Strong  organized  a 
corporation  to  build  his  line  through  the  Territory, 
and  prepared  and  secured  the  passage  of  an  innocent 
little  bill  relieving  his  new  company  from  all  the  ob- 
jectionable features  of  the  new  railroad  law.  This 
measure  was  signed  by  the  Governor  before  the  lei- 
surely hostiles  awoke  to  what  was  going  on. 

Strong  hurried  back  to  headquarters,  and  after 
much  urging  secured  permission  to  make  the  surveys 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         271 

in  the  spring.  As  this  was  in  the  last  week  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1878,  Strong  interpreted  "  spring  "  as  mean- 
ing that  moment.  He  immediately  sent  a  rush  mes- 
sage to  Chief  Engineer  A.  A.  Robinson,  who,  by  the 
way,  achieved  the  remarkable  record  of  building  every 
mile  of  the  Santa  Fe  system  not  acquired  by  pur- 
chase, to  go  to  Raton  Pass  and  take  possession. 

When  Mr.  Robinson  stepped  on  the  Rio  Grande 
train  at  Pueblo  to  go  to  El  Moro,  the  nearest  rail- 
road point  to  Raton  Pass,  he  found  J.  A.  McMurtrie, 
the  chief  engineer  of  the  Rio  Grande,  on  board.  Each 
guessed  the  other's  business. 

On  reaching  El  Moro,  McMurtrie  instantly  set 
about  organizing  and  arming  his  force,  while  Robin- 
son hurried  to  Trinidad,  five  miles  away,  as  fast  as 
horseflesh  could  carry  him.  The  Denver  and  Rio 
Grande  company  in  the  beginning  instituted  the 
disastrous  policy  of  avoiding  established  towns  and 
building  up  towns  of  its  own.  This  policy  quite  nat- 
urally embittered  a  good  part  of  the  people  of  the 
State,  and  endangered  the  existence  of  the  road. 

Trinidad  was  an  old  town,  which  had  been  passed 
by  in  favor  of  El  Moro,  a  creation  of  the  railroad. 
Consequently,  Robinson  had  no  difficulty  in  recruit- 
ing a  little  army  with  shovels  and  rifles,  enthusiastic- 
ally willing  to  thwart  the  Rio  Grande  company  and 
to  shoot  up  its  cohorts  if  opportunity  offered.  Mc- 
Murtrie, on  the  other  hand,  found  it  easy  to  gather 
a  strong  force  of  equally  eager  partisans  of  his  own 
road  at  El  Moro. 

Robinson's  men  proved  to  be  the  best  sprinters,  for 
they  reached  Raton  Pass  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, just  thirty  minutes  before  the  McMurtrie  forces 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

appeared.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  loud  talk,  but 
as  neither  leader  was  Western  bred,  they  didn't  know 
where  to  leave  off  talking  and  begin  shooting.  The 
baffled  Rio  Grande  forces  finally  withdrew  and  left 
the  Santa  Fe  in  possession  of  the  pass. 

It  was  by  the  narrow  margin  of  thirty  minutes, 
therefore,  that  the  Santa  Fe  missed  being  cut  off 
from  the  coast  and  left  a  mere  local  road,  to  be  gob- 
bled up  by  a  stronger  system,  for  if  McMurtrie  had 
reached  the  pass  first  he  would  unquestionably  have 
held  it  for  the  Rio  Grande. 

The  first  car  passed  into  New  Mexico  over  Raton 
Summit,  December  7,  1878,  by  means  of  a  switch- 
back three  and  a  quarter  miles  long,  with  six  switches 
and  maximum  grades  of  three  hundred  and  sixteen 
feet  to  the  mile.  A  Baldwin  mogul,  weighing  one 
hundred  and  ten  thousand  pounds,  the  largest  loco- 
motive ever  built  up  to  that  time,  was  ordered  espe- 
cially to  do  the  work  on  this  switchback. 

A  year  later  a  tunnel  two  thousand  feet  long 
pierced  the  summit  at  an  altitude  of  seven  thousand 
six  hundred  and  twenty-two  feet,  reducing  the  maxi- 
mum grade  on  Raton  Mountain  to  one  hundred  and 
eighty-five  feet.  Even  that  was  enough  to  make 
things  interesting  for  the  train  crews  before  air-brakes 
came  into  general  use.  That  same  season  the  grad- 
ing was  completed  to  Las  Vegas,  one  hundred  and 
ten  miles  beyond. 

While  the  main  line  was  being  pushed  over  the 
Raton  Mountains,  a  spectacular  struggle  was  going 
on  for  possession  of  the  Grand  Canon  of  the  Arkan- 
sas. Strong  began  making  arrangements  early  in  the 
spring  for  a  coup.  Being  in  possession  of  the  tele- 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         273 

graph  wires,  the  Rio  Grande  was  able  to  get  hold  of 
cipher  dispatches  which  revealed  to  them  what  was 
going  forward. 

Strong,  who  was  at  El  Moro,  heard,  on  the  19th 
of  April,  1878,  that  General  W.  J.  Palmer,  president 
of  the  Rio  Grande  company,  had  arranged  to  cut  him 
out  of  the  Grand  Canon.  Accordingly,  he  wired  to 
Engineer  William  R.  Morley,  who  was  at  La  Junta, 
to  take  an  engine  and  proceed  with  all  possible  speed 
to  Pueblo,  sixty-three  miles  away,  and  there  take  a 
Denver  and  Rio  Grande  train  to  Canon  City,  to  or- 
ganize a  force  with  which  he  was  to  take  possession  of 
the  Grand  Canon  and  hold  it  against  the  Rio  Grande. 
Morley  carried  out  his  instructions  until  he  got  to 
Pueblo. 

No  train  to  Canon  City  being  available,  he  tried  to 
get  a  narrow-gauge  locomotive  on  the  Rio  Grande  to 
take  him  up,  but  he  was  refused.  He  immediately 
hunted  up  the  best  horse  procurable  in  Pueblo,  and 
started  late  at  night  on  the  forty-mile  ride  to  Canon 
City.  About  the  same  time  that  he  left  Pueblo  a 
Rio  Grande  train  also  left  that  place,  bearing  a  force 
of  one  hundred  men  to  take  possession  of  the  Grand 
Canon  for  General  Palmer. 

It  was  a  pretty  race  between  horse  and  locomotive. 
A  narrow-gauge  mountain  locomotive  has  to  turn  its 
wheels  over  a  good  many  times  to  cover  a  mile,  and 
besides,  the  track  being  new  and  rough,  the  engineer 
was  not  trying  to  make  speed  records.  Also,  the  Rio 
Grande  commander  didn't  know  Morley. 

It  was  an  unequal  race.  The  horse  was  good  for 
a  spurt,  but  a  forty-mile  run  against  a  locomotive  was 
too  much.  Toward  the  last  he  failed  under  Morley's 


274  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

lash,  and  something  more  than  a  mile  from  Canon 
City  he  dropped  dead. 

Without  a  moment's  pause  Morley  struck  a  dog- 
trot, and  kept  it  up  till  he  reached  the  office  of  the 
local  company  which  had  been  organized  to  build  the 
road  for  the  Santa  Fe.  With  all  possible  speed  he 
gathered  a  force  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  men  and 
started  for  the  mouth  of  the  canon,  two  miles  away, 
on  the  run. 

Precious  little  time  was  lost  in  this,  for  Canon  City 
was  bitter  against  the  Rio  Grande  for  seeking  to  build 
a  rival  town  near  by,  and  citizens  were  never  very 
widely  separated  from  their  guns. 

Arriving  at  the  mouth  of  the  canon,  part  of  the 
force  began  digging  wherever  they  could  find  any 
loose  dirt.  The  construction  of  the  Santa  Fe  road 
through  the  Grand  Canon  had  begun.  The  rest  se- 
lected nice  cozy  nooks  behind  bullet-proof  bowlders, 
arranged  their  rifles  and  six-shooters  so  they  would  be 
real  handy,  and  waited  as  if  they  were  expecting  some 
one. 

They  didn't  wait  long.  The  Rio  Grande  people 
were  so  sure  they  had  the  advantage  that  they  had 
not  exhibited  undue  haste ;  therefore,  on  a  second  mo- 
mentous occasion  they  arrived  thirty  minutes  too  late. 

Knowing  only  too  well  that  the  arrangements  made 
for  their  reception  were  no  idle  bluff,  the  Rio  Grande 
forces  withdrew  after  a  brief  parley.  Work  was 
pushed  on  the  grading  with  all  possible  despatch. 

Strong  was  so  delighted  with  Morley 's  achievement 
that  he  presented  him  with  a  repeating  rifle  elabo- 
rately mounted  with  gold.  While  making  a  survey 
for  the  Santa  Fe  near  Guayamas,  Mexico,  some  time 


By  courtesy  of  the  Denver  and  Rio  Grande  Railroad. 

THE  ROYAL  GORGE,  FOR  POSSESSION  OF  WHICH  THE  RIO  GRANDE 

WAR   WTAS  WTAGED. 

At  the  point  where  the  hanging  bridge  is  seen  in  the  background  the  canyon  is 
thirty  feet  wide  at  the  bottom,  while  the  walls  rise  almost  vertically  2,627  feet 
above  the  track. 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         275 

later,  Morley  attempted  to  take  this  rifle  out  of  an 
ambulance  muzzle  foremost. 

The  gun  was  discharged,  killing  him  instantly. 
His  name  has  been  given  to  a  station  on  the  main  line 
near  the  southern  border  of  Colorado. 

Possession  of  the  Grand  Canon  was  necessary  to 
the  existence  of  the  Rio  Grande.  The  company, 
therefore,  never  for  a  moment  considered  the  possi- 
bility of  giving  up  the  struggle  for  it.  A  working 
force,  guarded  by  a  small  army  of  fighting  men,  took 
possession  of  the  canon  some  distance  above  where 
Morley  was  at  work,  erected  forts,  and  began  the  con- 
struction of  the  road. 

Thereupon  the  Santa  Fe  obtained  an  injunction  to 
restrain  the  Rio  Grande  forces  from  any  further 
action,  and  also  had  Chief  Engineer  J.  A.  McMur- 
trie  and  Treasurer  R.  F.  Weitbrec,  of  the  Rio 
Grande,  arrested. 

Both  sides  continued  to  seize  and  fortify  all  avail- 
able points  in  the  canon  above  and  below.  There 
were  numerous  arrests  every  day,  and  events  were 
hurrying  forward  as  speedily  as  possible  to  a  bloody 
encounter,  when,  on  April  26,  the  Rio  Grande  secured 
an  injunction  to  stop  the  Santa  Fe's  work.  Ten 
days  later  the  Rio  Grande  had  the  injunction  pro- 
ceedings transferred  to  the  Federal  courts,  alleging 
that  it  could  not  get  justice  in  the  local  courts,  which 
was  strictly  true,  as  the  feeling  against  it  at  Canon 
City  was  intense. 

Judge  Hallett,  of  the  Federal  Court,  enjoined  both 
parties  from  doing  anything  in  the  cafton  until  their 
rights  could  be  decided  in  the  courts.  Each  party 
was  placed  under  twenty  thousand  dollars  bond.  The 


276  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

matter  was  taken  to  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court. 

For  a  while  it  looked  as  if  the  guns  were  to  be  put 
aside  while  the  contest  was  fought  to  a  finish  with  the 
less  romantic  check-book.  President  Nickerson  was 
continuing  his  achievements  in  raising  money  for  con- 
struction, the  system  had  grown  to  a  total  of  eight 
hundred  and  sixty-eight  miles,  and  the  earnings  for 
1878  were  three  million  nine  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand eight  hundred  and  sixty-eight  dollars,  while  the 
Rio  Grande  was  growing  more  hopelessly  involved 
every  day.  General  Palmer  grew  discouraged,  and 
on  the  19th  of  October,  1878,  leased  his  road  to  the 
Santa  Fe.  Possession  of  the  road  was  given  at  mid- 
night, December  13,  1878. 

This  move  by  no  means  allayed  the  ill-feeling  be- 
tween the  rival  companies.  The  Santa  Fe's  first  act 
intensified  the  feeling,  aroused  the  antagonism  of  the 
people  of  Colorado,  and  played  into  the  hands  of  the 
Rio  Grande  company.  A  part  of  the  agreement 
under  which  the  lease  was  made  provided  that  the 
lessee  should  not  discriminate  against  Denver. 

In  defiance  of  this  agreement,  rates  from  Denver 
southward  were  immediately  raised,  which  had  the 
effect  of  cutting  off  Denver's  jobbing  trade  and 
throwing  it  to  Kansas  City.  In  other  ways  the  Santa 
Fe  gave  indications  of  an  intention  to  wreck  the  Rio 
Grande  road ;  at  least,  so  the  Rio  Grande  people  said. 

Almost  immediately  after  the  lease  was  executed 
the  Rio  Grande  company,  alleging  that  the  instru- 
ment had  been  broken  in  letter  and  spirit  by  the  lessee 
within  twenty-four  hours  after  taking  possession  of 
the  road,  set  about  getting  its  property  back  again. 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         277 

General  Palmer  renewed  his  efforts  to  raise  money 
for  construction  to  Leadville,  and  at  last  was  suc- 
cessful. 

As  time  went  on  the  Rio  Grande  people  became 
exasperated  to  the  fighting  point.  The  sentiments 
of  the  management  were  cordially  shared  by  its  old 
employees  in  the  train  and  engine  service.  W.  W. 
Borst,  superintendent  for  the  Santa  Fe,  had  to  issue 
a  circular  admonishing  his  men  to  take  orders  from 
no  one  but  the  Santa  Fe  authorities. 

Armed  detachments  began  to  slip  into  the  Grand 
Canon  and  fortify  advantageous  positions  in  March, 
1879,  in  anticipation  of  the  decision  of  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court,  which  was  expected  soon. 
April  19,  Mr.  Strong  went  to  Denver  to  prepare  for 
the  war  in  the  Grand  Canon  which  seemed  inevitable, 
and  also  for  the  impending  legal  struggle. 

Early  in  June,  1879,  the  Rio  Grande  people  pro- 
cured from  Judge  Bo  wen,  at  San  Luis,  an  order  re- 
storing the  road  to  them.  This  order  was  placed  in 
the  hands  of  the  sheriffs  of  the  various  counties,  to  be 
served  simultaneously  all  along  the  line  at  6  o'clock 
on  the  morning  of  Wednesday,  June  9.  The  Rio 
Grande  saw  to  it  that  the  sheriffs  had  plenty  of  armed 
men  to  enforce  the  mandate  of  the  court. 

The  spectacular  feature  of  the  day  was  the  raid  of 
ex-Governor  A.  C.  Hunt,  an  enthusiastic  Rio  Grande 
partisan,  who  is  described  as  a  "  whirlwind  of  energy 
and  indiscretion."  He  lived  up  to  his  characteriza- 
tion in  a  raid,  on  that  memorable  9th  of  June,  which 
makes  the  exploits  of  Mosby's  guerrillas  seem  tame. 

Starting  from  El  Moro,  bright  and  early,  with  a 
train  carrying  two  hundred  armed  men,  he  swept 


278  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

everything  before  him  as  he  went  up  the  line  to 
Pueblo.  Station  agents  were  captured  and  taken  on 
the  train.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  shooting,  and  at 
Cuchara  two  Santa  Fe  men  were  reported  killed  and 
two  wounded.  At  Denver,  office  doors  were  battered 
in  with  a  cross-tie  handled  by  husky  section  men.  At 
most  points  there  was  an  easy  victory  for  the  Rio 
Grande. 

At  Pueblo,  things  looked  squally  for  a  time.  The 
Santa  Fe  had  recruited  a  select  band  of  fighting  men 
at  Dodge  City,  under  the  command  of  Bat  Master- 
son,  who  as  marshal  of  that  interesting  town  had 
achieved  a  reputation  for  skill  and  celerity  in  dispos- 
ing of  bad  men  who  expressed  a  desire  to  shoot  him 
up. 

This  formidable  force  was  posted  in  the  round- 
house at  Pueblo  on  that  9th  of  June.  The  Rio 
Grande  army  did  not  attempt  to  take  the  fortress  by 
storm,  but  threw  up  fortifications  commanding  it  and 
prepared  for  a  siege.  Doubtless  there  would  have 
been  another  Sebastopol  if  it  had  not  been  for  R.  F. 
Weitbrec,  the  practical-minded  treasurer  of  the  Rio 
Grande. 

On  the  theory  that  the  dollar  is  mightier  than  the 
six-shooter,  Mr.  Weitbrec  sent  a  flag  of  truce  to  the 
roundhouse.  In  due  time  he  transacted  a  little  pri- 
vate business  with  the  valiant  defenders  of  Pueblo, 
and  the  siege  was  ended. 

One  last  stronghold  in  Pueblo  remained  in  the 
hands  of  the  Santa  Fe,  and  that  was  the  despatched 
office.  This  was  taken  late  in  the  evening  by  an 
assault  in  which  there  was  a  great  deal  of  shooting, 
but  no  list  of  killed  and  wounded.  Ex-Governor 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         279 

Hunt's  victorious  army  then  made  a  dash  upon  Canon 
City,  where  some  Santa  Fe  fugitives  had  fled  with 
four  locomotives.  The  place  was  captured  without 
resistance. 

On  taking  possession  of  the  road,  Mr.  Strong  had 
allowed  the  old  Rio  Grande  men,  with  the  exception 
of  a  few  station  agents,  to  retain  their  places.  This 
may  have  been  good  railroad  management,  but  it  was 
mighty  poor  military  strategy. 

When  war  broke  out  the  whole  operating  depart- 
ment not  only  became  willing  captives,  but  on  reach- 
ing Colorado  Springs,  which  was  then  headquarters 
of  the  Rio  Grande,  each  crew  received  arms  and  am- 
munition to  defend  its  train  from  recapture. 

Vanquished  in  war,  Mr.  Strong  appealed  to  the 
United  States  Circuit  Court  at  Denver,  where  Judges 
Miller  and  Hallett,  on  the  23d  of  June,  ordered  the 
road  restored  to  the  lessee  within  three  days.  They 
added  an  emphatic  warning  that  it  would  be  well  if 
the  mandate  of  the  court  were  obeyed,  but  intimated 
that  legal  proceedings  might  be  begun  to  cancel  the 
lease. 

Great  was  the  wrath  of  the  Rio  Grande  men  over 
the  order  of  restitution.  Santa  Fe  engineers  were 
pulled  from  their  cabs  and  beaten ;  threatening  no- 
tices, decorated  with  skulls  and  cross-bones,  were  sent 
to  agents,  brakemen,  and  every  one  connected  with 
the  Santa  Fe.  A  word  of  sympathy  for  the  Santa 
Fe  was  a  bid  for  a  broken  head. 

Blood  flowed  freely,  and  the  authorities  were  pow- 
erless. Judge  Hallett  ended  the  disturbance  by  ap- 
pointing Colonel  L.  C.  Ellsworth  receiver,  on  the 
24th  of  June,  who  managed  the  road  until  it  was  re- 


280  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

stored  to  the  Rio  Grande  company,  which  has  re- 
mained in  undisturbed  possession  ever  since. 

During  the  war  the  United  States  Supreme  Court 
had  rendered  a  decision  in  the  contest  for  possession 
of  the  Grand  Canon  favorable  to  the  Rio  Grande. 
The  Santa  Fe  had  not  thought  it  worth  while  to  wait 
for  this  little  formality,  and  had  rushed  work  with 
such  energy  that  twenty  miles  of  road  had  been  com- 
pleted, and  the  rest  of  the  line  to  Leadville  nearly  all 
graded. 

To  show  that  there  was  no  hard  feeling,  the  Rio 
Grande  sent  Engineer  De  Remer  to  carry  news  of 
the  decision  to  the  Santa  Fe  construction  gang.  Mr. 
De  Remer,  for  company's  sake,  took  fifty  men  with 
him  on  the  journey  to  the  end  of  the  track;  also  fifty 
repeating  rifles.  Hunting  up  the  Santa  Fe  engineer 
in  charge,  he  ordered  him  to  stop  work  instantly. 

"  By  whose  authority  do  you  give  that  order? " 

"  By  the  decision  of  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court  and  these  fifty  men  behind  me." 

Work  was  stopped. 

Jay  Gould,  having  through  heavy  purchases  of 
Rio  Grande  stock,  acquired  the  right  to  act  as  medi- 
ator, a  protocol  was  signed,  December  20,  1879,  which 
put  an  end  to  the  Rio  Grande  war,  the  most  extraor- 
dinary episode  in  the  annals  of  the  railroad.  For 
months  each  belligerent  had  maintained  an  army  of 
three  hundred  to  five  hundred  men  in  the  field,  had 
laid  sieges,  built  fortifications,  captured  trains,  cut 
telegraph  wires,  kidnaped  public  officials,  purloined 
court  seals,  kept  a  whole  State  in  a  ferment,  and  done 
many  other  picturesque  things  which  are  now  re- 
garded as  foreign  to  railroad  operation. 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL         281 

By  the  treaty  of  Boston,  signed  February  11,  1880, 
all  possibility  of  further  hostilities  was  obviated. 
By  the  terms  of  the  treaty  the  lease  was  canceled,  the 
receivership  ended,  all  litigation  was  stopped,  the  line 
to  Leadville  became  the  property  of  the  Rio  Grande 
on  payment  of  one  million  four  hundred  thousand 
dollars  to  the  Santa  Fe,  and  the  Rio  Grande's  pro- 
jected line  from  Pueblo  to  St.  Louis  was  abandoned. 
The  Santa  Fe  had  now  grown  to  one  thousand  one 
hundred  and  eighty-one  miles,  and  its  earnings  in 
1879  were  six  million  three  hundred  and  eighty-one 
thousand  four  hundred  and  forty-two  dollars. 

Having  abandoned  its  Colorado  plans,  the  Santa 
Fe  was  free  to  devote  all  its  energies  to  building  on 
to  the  Pacific.  They  were  needed.  While  New 
Mexico  is  generally  regarded  as  a  desert,  the  face  of 
the  country  shows  unmistakably  that  it  is  visited  by 
rainstorms  of  extreme  violence.  The  engineers  con- 
sulted old  inhabitants  at  great  length,  studied  the 
topography  of  the  country,  and  constructed  the  road 
in  accordance  with  the  information  thus  obtained. 

But  after  they  had  built  an  impregnable  culvert  at 
one  point  to  carry  off  the  surplus  waters,  they  would 
go  out  after  a  storm  to  find  that  not  a  drop  of  water 
had  flowed  through  it,  while  some  miles  of  track  they 
had  regarded  as  safe  from  the  possibility  of  washout 
would  be  scattered  promiscuously  over  the  landscape 
for  miles  around. 

The  Rio  Grande  River  was  also  extremely  trouble- 
some. One  day  it  would  be  on  one  side  of  the  track, 
the  next  day  on  the  other.  As  late  as  1884  Superin- 
tendent George  L.  Sands  and  his  men  might  be  seen 
wading,  swimming,  and  diving  in  efforts  to  find  a  sec- 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

tion  of  main  line  over  which  trains  had  been  running 
a  few  hours  before. 

In  1880  the  Santa  Fe  entered  into  an  alliance  with 
the  St.  Louis  and  San  Francisco  Railroad  to  build 
at  once  that  part  of  the  old  Atlantic  and  Pacific  line 
west  from  Albuquerque,  and  thus  gain  an  entrance 
into  California  independent  of  the  Central  Pacific  in- 
fluence. As  a  precaution  against  this  hostile  influ- 
ence it  was  provided  that  the  control  of  the  road  was 
to  be  in  the  hands  of  three  trustees,  two  of  whom 
were  to  be  from  Boston,  where  Santa  Fe  stock  was 
chiefly  owned,  and  that  seven  of  the  thirteen  direct- 
ors were  to  be  Santa  Fe  men. 

Late  in  1881  the  expenditure  of  sixteen  million 
five  hundred  thousand  dollars  was  authorized,  and 
the  stockholders  were  jubilant  over  the  prospective 
speedy  completion  of  the  road.  Early  in  January 
the  astounding  fact  became  known  that  Jay  Gould 
and  C.  P.  Huntington  had  purchased  the  St.  Louis 
and  San  Francisco,  and  were  in  a  position  to  prevent 
the  extension  of  the  road.  Gould  wanted  the  South- 
west for  his  own  roads,  and  Huntington  was  inter- 
ested in  protecting  his  California  monopoly.  Both 
insisted  that  the  Santa  Fe  should  stop  at  the  Colo- 
rado River. 

Other  troubles  followed  thick  and  fast.  Between 
1885  and  the  beginning  of  1888  the  Missouri  Pacific, 
a  Gould  line,  built  one  thousand  and  seventy-one 
miles  of  road,  and  the  Rock  Island  built  one  thousand 
three  hundred  miles  paralleling  the  Santa  Fe.  The 
payment  of  dividends  ceased,  the  price  of  stock  went 
down  to  almost  nothing,  and  the  road  lost  the  confi- 
dence of  shippers  and  the  respect  of  competitors. 


THROUGH  TRIBULATION  BY  RAIL 

The  panic  of  1893  put  on  the  finishing  touches. 
There  was  a  receivership  and  a  reorganization,  and 
then  prosperity. 

Cyrus  K.  Holliday  lived  to  see  his  dream  fulfilled. 
The  road  of  which  he  was  a  director  for  twenty  years, 
and  which  one  of  his  cheerful  fellow  members  of  the 
board  predicted  would  never  pay  operating  expenses, 
now  runs  through  trains  over  its  own  rails  from  Chi- 
cago to  Denver,  Galveston,  Los  Angeles,  and  San 
Francisco. 

Its  hoodoo  has  at  last  been  laid,  its  rifles  have  been 
traded  for  coupon  scissors,  and  the  competitors  who 
once  treated  it  with  contumely  now  respectfully  re- 
quest the  loan  of  its  recipe  for  boosting  net  earnings. 
The  hopes  of  its  founders  have  been  realized. 


CHAPTER  IX 
ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD 

TO  speak  of  the  building  of  the  Canadian  Pacific 
Railway  as  a  "  work,"  sounds  almost  pedantic. 
Think  of  men  toiling  month  after  month  through 
almost  impenetrable  forests,  seeking  a  way  across  a 
mountain  range,  and  when  at  last  it  seemed  as  if  they 
must  be  forced  to  admit  themselves  defeated,  being 
led  by  an  eagle  to  the  only  pass  in  the  entire  range ! 

Think  of  a  vast  wilderness  turned  as  if  by  enchant- 
ment into  a  populous  and  thriving  empire  by  the 
magic  of  the  steel  highway,  built  on  the  route  the 
eagle  revealed!  Think  of  an  enterprise  which  in- 
volved the  expenditure  of  one  hundred  and  forty 
million  dollars  which  the  breath  of  scandal  never  tar- 
nished, which  met  every  obligation  when  it  was  due, 
and  many  even  before  they  were  due ;  and  which  vol- 
untarily pensioned  those  dependent  upon  the  pioneers 
who  lost  their  lives  in  its  service ! 

Think  of  the  poor  Scotch  boy,  who  began  life  in  the 
desolation  of  the  Labrador  wilderness  in  the  hardest 
of  all  services,  that  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  at 
a  salary  of  one  hundred  dollars  a  year,  winning  vast 
wealth,  a  peerage,  and  about  everything  else  that 
men  prize,  as  one  of  the  prime  movers  in  this  great 
enterprise! 

Think  of  the  many  other  men  who  won  wealth  and 
titles  and  fame  in  executing  this  same  magnificent 

284 


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ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         285 

conception,  and  then  say  if  "  Romance  "  is  not  a  more 
fitting  term  with  which  to  characterize  the  building  of 
the  Canadian  Pacific  Railway. 

The  sheer  audacity  of  the  project  when  it  was  first 
broached  was  fascinating.  Here  was  a  colony,  not  an 
independent  nation,  a  mere  appanage  of  the  British 
crown,  with  fewer  than  five  million  inhabitants  scat- 
tered in  a  narrow  fringe  along  the  eastern  end  of  the 
boundary  line  between  Canada  and  the  United  States, 
proposing  to  build  a  railroad  three  thousand  miles 
through  an  unknown  wilderness  to  reach  four  or  five 
thousand  other  colonists  in  the  lonely  forests  of  the 
Pacific  coast. 

But  as  the  four  thousand  would  join  the  newly 
formed  confederation  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard  only 
on  condition  that  they  be  provided  with  a  railroad 
over  which  they  could  travel  whenever  their  advice 
was  needed  by  their  four  million  brethren,  there  was 
nothing  to  do  but  build  the  road. 

The  proposal  to  build  the  Canadian  Pacific  encoun- 
tered the  usual  derision  and  the  usual  demonstrations 
that  it  could  never  be  done  common  to  all  great  enter- 
prises. But  gradually  the  scheme  took  shape.  As 
it  seemed  obvious  that  no  private  corporation  would 
consider  three  thousand  miles  of  railroad  through  a 
wilderness  a  profitable  investment,  it  was  proposed  to 
have  the  government  build  the  road. 

Immediately  the  transcontinental  railroad  became 
a  political  issue.  The  Conservative  party  wanted  the 
road  built ;  the  Liberals  took  the  position  that  it  would 
be  a  scandalous  waste  of  public  money,  since  such  a 
road  could  never  earn  enough  to  pay  for  its  axle 
grease.  Here,  then,  was  a  subject  for  dissension 


286  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

abundantly  capable  of  keeping  the  Dominion  in  a 
ferment  for  years,  and  it  did  it.  Government  after 
government  went  down  in  the  effort  to  get  the  rail- 
road under  way. 

In  March,  1874,  two  years  after  the  surveys  had 
been  instituted,  the  Liberals,  more  than  ever  appalled 
by  the  formidable  undertaking,  sent  J.  D.  Edgar  as 
envoy  extraordinary  to  the  unreasonable  British  Co- 
lumbians to  try  to  persuade  them  to  be  content  with 
a  wagon  road  across  the  mountains  to  be  maintained 
at  an  annual  expenditure  of  one  million  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  Instead  of  receiving  the  Liberal 
envoy  graciously,  and  talking  the  matter  over  with 
him,  the  indignant  British  Columbians  rushed  their 
Premier,  George  A.  Walkem,  straight  to  London  to 
lay  their  grievances  before  the  Colonial  Secretary. 
It  is  said  that  the  obstreperous  Westerner  so  dis- 
turbed the  equanimity  of  the  Colonial  Office  that  it 
has  not  recovered  to  this  day.  Naturally  this  did  riot 
make  friends  of  the  Liberals ;  but  in  the  end  the  Brit- 
ish Columbians  and  the  Conservatives  had  their  way. 

Each  change  of  government  contributed  a  little  to 
the  evolution  of  the  magnificent  project.  Sandford 
Fleming,  a  Scotch  engineer  who  had  built  the  Inter- 
colonial Railway,  was  engaged  as  chief  engineer.  In 
1871  he  made  the  preliminary  arrangements  for  the 
surveys.  As  the  whole  territory,  large  enough  to 
make  a  dozen  States  the  size  of  Illinois,  lying  between 
Ottawa  and  the  Pacific,  was  entirely  uninhabited  ex- 
cept by  a  few  hundred  persons  around  the  silver 
mines  near  Port  Arthur  and  a  couple  of  thousand 
more  at  Winnipeg,  and  was  practically  unknown, 
this  was  a  formidable  undertaking. 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         287 

In  July,  1872,  Fleming  started  from  Montreal  to 
take  his  first  look  at  the  country,  and  after  traveling 
three  thousand  three  hundred  miles  through  the  wil- 
derness in  ninety  days,  arrived  in  Victoria  October  11. 
In  the  following  year  a  great  amount  of  surveying 
was  accomplished. 

Although  there  were  no  bloodthirsty  Indians  dog- 
ging their  footsteps  with  tireless  cunning,  watching 
for  a  chance  to  massacre  without  danger  to  them- 
selves, the  task  of  the  pathfinders  was  not  without  its 
perils.  Sometimes  death,  swift  and  terrible,  overtook 
those  who  sought  to  solve  the  riddle  of  the  wilderness. 
On  August  7,  1871,  Alex.  Sinclair,  William  Mathe- 
son,  and  five  Indians,  belonging  to  a  surveying  party 
assigned  to  the  great  woods  north  of  Lake  Superior, 
were  surrounded  by  forest  fires  and  burned  to  death. 

Then  there  was  Tom  Clancy,  who  started  alone  to 
drag  a  load  weighing  four  hundred  pounds,  lashed 
to  some  poles,  across  the  ice  on  an  arm  of  Lake 
Huron,  November  13,  1872.  His  cap,  found  floating 
on  the  water  in  a  hole  in  the  ice,  showed  only  too 
plainly  what  became  of  him. 

May  20  of  that  same  year  A.  Hamilton,  engineer 
in  charge,  and  E.  J.  C.  Abbott,  transit  man,  in  that 
same  wild  region  went  to  a  Hudson  Bay  Company 
post  on  Lake  Temiscamingue  in  a  small  canoe  to  set- 
tle an  account  and  get  G.  Knaut  and  G.  Rochette, 
chain  and  ax  men,  who  had  been  laid  up  with  scurvy. 

The  post  trader  wanted  them  to  take  a  larger  canoe 
on  their  return  trip,  but  they  refused.  None  of  the 
party  was  ever  seen  again,  but  their  canoe  was  found 
floating  bottom  up. 

November  26  of  that  same  disastrous  year  the 


288  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERfi  NEW 

steamer  Mary  Ward  was  wrecked  a  few  miles  west 
of  Collingwood,  and  three  members  of  the  survey 
who  were  on  their  way  to  a  new  field  of  operations 
were  drowned.  July  24,  1873,  three  men  were 
drowned  trying  to  get  away  from  a  camp  on  White- 
fish  Lake  with  a  canoe-load  of  supplies. 

The  accident  happened  within  two  hundred  feet  of 
shore  while  the  whole  camp  was  looking  on,  but  no 
help  could  reach  them  in  time.  Most  of  the  deaths 
in  this  preliminary  work  were  from  drowning,  though 
a  few  died  from  the  effects  of  exposure. 

Altogether  thirty-four  lives  were  lost  in  those  seven 
years  of  adventurous  toil  and  hardship.  In  each  in- 
stance the  government  paid  two  years'  salary  to  the 
family  of  the  dead  man.  Sandford  Fleming  saw  to 
that,  often  paying  the  money  first  and  consulting  the 
government  about  it  afterward. 

Camp  equipment,  instruments,  and  provisions  usu- 
ally had  to  be  carried  on  men's  backs,  and  sup- 
plies forwarded  to  parties  in  the  field  were  trans- 
ported by  the  same  method,  sometimes  for  hundreds 
of  miles.  It  can  readily  be  imagined,  therefore,  that 
camp  life  under  such  circumstances  was  not  exactly 
luxurious. 

Indians  rendered  valuable  assistance  in  the  surveys. 
Sometimes  the  difficulties  of  travel  in  the  trackless 
mountains  were  so  great  that  the  white  men  sent  to 
deliver  messages  turned  back  while  their  Indian  com- 
panions went  on  and  accomplished  what  they  were 
sent  to  do,  even  if  they  did  get  in  more  dead  than 
alive. 

Surveying  on  the  Pacific  coast,  where,  owing  to 
the  wet  climate,  the  forest  growth  is  tropical  in  lux- 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         289 

uriance,  was  particularly  difficult.  Marcus  A.  Smith, 
the  resident  engineer  in  charge  of  the  work  in  British 
Columbia,  set  out  early  in  the  summer  of  1872  to 
explore  a  possible  route  from  Bute  Inlet,  which  is  far 
to  the  north  of  the  location  finally  chosen. 

He  was  provided  with  both  pack-horses  and  canoes. 
But  the  ground  was  so  covered  with  underbrush, 
matted  together  by  aralea,  a  creeper  armed  with  long 
thorns  which  made  festering  wounds  wherever  it 
touched  the  flesh,  and  so  obstructed  by  enormous 
fallen  trees,  that  the  party  could  only  cover  five  miles 
the  first  day,  and  the  men  with  the  canoes  could  not 
do  even  that  well  owing  to  the  extreme  crookedness 
of  the  Inlet. 

As  a  result  of  three  days'  excessively  hard  work 
the  party  advanced  eighteen  miles.  Then  the  horses 
were  abandoned  and  Indians  were  engaged  to  carry 
the  supplies.  The  fallen  trees  were  so  large  that  it 
was  necessary  to  cut  steps  in  them  to  enable  the  men 
to  climb  over. 

But  even  this  was  nothing  to  the  difficulties  encoun- 
tered in  endeavoring  to  follow  up  the  canon  of  the 
Homathco  River.  Here  there  were  cliffs  of  smooth 
granite  rising  vertically  two  hundred  feet  from  the 
boiling  torrent  below.  It  was  necessary  to  drill  holes 
in  the  rock  for  iron  bars  to  support  a  line  of  timbers 
to  get  through  this  canon. 

Chasms  were  bridged  with  single  logs  over  which 
men  had  to  crawl  with  heavy  loads  on  their  backs. 
The  roar  of  the  river  and  the  boom  of  bowlders  car- 
ried along  by  the  torrent  striking  on  the  rocks  in  its 
bed  were  so  deafening  that  men  a  few  feet  apart  could 
not  hear  each  other  shout.  Work  had  to  be  directed 


290  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

by  signs.  This  was  too  "  skookum  "  for  the  Indians, 
so  they  resigned. 

The  experience  of  Engineer  E.  W.  Jarvis,  who 
late  in  the  autumn  of  1874  received  orders  to  explore 
a  pass  through  the  Rocky  Mountains,  is  a  fair  sample 
of  the  life  of  the  engineers  who  searched  out  the  route 
for  the  railroad  through  an  unknown  mountain  wil- 
derness. 

Jarvis  left  the  mouth  of  the  Quesnelle  River  on  the 
Pacific  coast,  December  9,  1874,  taking  with  him 
C.  F.  Hannington  as  assistant,  Alec  McDonald  as 
dog-driver,  and  an  Indian  boy  as  cook.  They  went 
first  to  Fort  George,  a  Hudson  Bay  Company  post, 
where  they  were  to  get  dogs  and  supplies. 

On  January  14,  1875,  the  expedition  started. 
There  were  three  white  men,  three  Indians,  and  three 
dog  teams  of  four  dogs  each,  carrying  provisions  cal- 
culated to  last  two  months.  Some  of  the  men  and 
teams  were  to  turn  back  after  they  had  transported 
supplies  well  up  into  the  mountains. 

Their  outfit  consisted  of  a  pair  of  snow-shoes  and 
one  pair  of  blankets  to  each  man,  with  some  extra 
moccasins  and  a  piece  of  light  cotton  sheeting  for  a 
tent,  canvas  being  too  cumbersome  to  carry.  This 
airy  structure  was  to  be  their  sole  shelter,  when  they 
had  any,  throughout  a  winter  in  which  the  tempera- 
ture averaged  thirty-nine  degrees  below  zero  for  the 
season,  and  often  dropped  to  fifty-three  degrees  be- 
low. The  provisions  were  bacon,  beans,  flour,  and  tea 
for  the  men  and  dried  salmon  for  the  dogs. 

They  were  to  traverse  an  unexplored  country 
many  miles  to  the  northward  of  the  present  line  of 
the  road.  Two  men  always  had  to  go  ahead  to  break 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         291 

a  trail  by  packing  down  the  snow  with  their  snow- 
shoes  to  enable  the  dogs  to  get  through.  Then  came 
the  lightest  team  with  the  others  following,  with  a 
driver  to  each. 

Lastly  came  Jarvis  or  Hannington  to  make  a  track 
survey  of  the  route.  Bearings  were  taken  with  a 
pocket  compass.  Distance  was  measured  by  pacing, 
forty  paces  to  the  chain.  The  whole  weary  distance 
to  Lake  St.  Anne,  fifty  miles  above  Edmonton,  was 
measured  in  this  manner. 

Noses  and  ears  were  frequently  frozen  in  the  in- 
tense cold.  There  was  no  comfort  in  camp,  for  when 
a  roaring  fire  was  built  the  men  only  succeeded  in 
roasting  the  side  nearest  the  blaze  while  the  other  side 
was  rendered  more  susceptible  to  the  cold.  The  dogs' 
toes  were  frozen  so  badly  that  it  was  necessary  to 
make  moccasins  for  them. 

On  halting  at  noon  on  the  third  day  out,  Marquis, 
the  leader  of  one  of  the  teams,  lay  down.  He  tried  to 
rise,  failed,  gave  a  spasmodic  wag  of  his  tail,  and 
rolled  over  dead.  Upon  examination,  his  legs  were 
found  to  be  frozen  stiff  to  the  shoulder.  A  thermom- 
eter exposed  to  the  sun  on  top  of  a  sled  at  the  time 
registered  forty-six  degrees  below  zero. 

Six  days  after  leaving  Fort  George,  a  cache  made 
the  previous  summer  was  reached.  Here  Hanning- 
ton turned  back  with  two  of  his  teams  to  bring  up 
some  dried  fish  for  dog  feed,  while  Jarvis,  taking 
McDonald  with  him,  went  on  up  the  north  fork  of 
the  Fraser  to  explore  and  break  a  track. 

Six  days  later  the  party  reunited  at  the  cache. 
Three  more  teams  from  Fort  George  came  up  with 
provisions  and  fish,  swelling  the  party  to  eight  men 


292  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

and  six  teams  of  dogs,  part  of  which  were  to  turn 
back  at  the  summit. 

One  day  McDonald  went  to  a  small  brook  which 
tumbled  down  a  rock  into  the  river  to  get  a  drink. 
The  water  of  the  brook  had  kept  the  river  ice  thin  so 
that  when  he  stooped  down  to  drink  he  suddenly 
dropped  beneath  the  ice.  Fortunately  an  Indian  was 
near  enough  to  grab  him  by  the  hair  when  he  popped 
up  to  the  surface. 

The  only  damage  was  a  soaking  in  ice  water  when 
the  temperature  was  forty  degrees  below  zero.  In 
the  next  few  days  nearly  all  the  rest  had  a  similar 
experience. 

Jarvis  himself  went  down  where  the  current  was  so 
swift  that  it  caught  his  snow-shoes  and  tugged  at  him 
so  desperately  that  it  required  the  united  efforts  of 
the  entire  party  to  drag  him  back  to  safety.  Had  he 
not  been  fortunate  enough  to  throw  his  arms  out  and 
get  a  support  on  firm  ice  he  would  have  gone  under 
for  good  and  all. 

About  the  1st  of  February  the  snowstorms  became 
almost  continuous.  The  snow  was  so  deep  that  when 
they  shoveled  down  to  the  moss  for  a  place  to  sleep 
they  could  not  see  over  the  edge  of  the  hole. 

In  traveling,  the  snow-shoes  would  sink  into  the 
snow  a  foot  and  come  up  with  a  small  avalanche  on 
the  toes  at  each  step.  This  caused  many  blisters  and 
frequent  attacks  of  mal  de  raquette,  which  is  a  com- 
bination of  paralysis  and  cramp  in  the  legs,  due  to 
constant  traveling  on  snow-shoes.  When  night  came 
all  hands  were  utterly  exhausted. 

Finally  the  valley  took  a  sharp  turn  to  the  north, 
the  stream  divided,  and  the  explorers  were  confronted 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         293 

by  impassable  barriers  of  rock.  There  was  nothing 
for  it  but  to  return  to  the  forks  and  try  the  south 
branch  of  the  Fraser.  They  reached  the  forks  Feb- 
ruary 12,  where  they  rested  a  day. 

Then  sending  two  of  the  Indians  with  two  teams 
back  to  Fort  George,  they  set  out  to  explore  the  south 
branch  of  the  north  fork  of  the  Fraser,  the  object 
being  to  find  a  pass  by  which  the  Smoky  River,  flow- 
ing southeast  from  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  could  be  reached.  The  woods  here 
swarmed  with  moose  and  other  game,  but  they  had  no 
time  for  hunting. 

The  party  was  hardly  out  of  sight  of  the  forks 
when  the  canon  closed  in  and  the  rocks  overhung  the 
trail  so  much  that  Hannington,  who  was  in  the  lead, 
was  obliged  to  take  off  his  snow-shoes  and  crawl  on 
hands  and  knees  for  fifty  yards,  where  he  was  halted 
by  a  waterfall.  Turning  back,  he  started  a  snowslide, 
which  thundered  down  to  the  river,  leaving  him  cling- 
ing to  the  rocks  like  a  fly  on  a  wall.  However,  he 
crawled  back  in  safety. 

Going  through  the  woods,  they  made  a  long  port- 
age, as  every  detour  from  the  river  was  called.  At 
the  south  end  of  the  portage  the  descent  to  the  river 
was  so  steep  that  Jarvis,  though  he  turned  the  sled  on 
its  side  and  sat  on  the  bow  as  the  only  way  of  apply- 
ing brakes,  was  thrown  off,  and  team  and  sled  plunged 
into  the  open  water.  Fortunately  no  harm  beyond 
breaking  some  traces  was  done. 

Hannington  took  a  hitch  around  a  tree  with  his 
trail  rope  and  lowered  his  sled  in  splendid  shape  until 
the  end  of  the  rope  was  reached.  When  he  tried  to 
pass  the  rope  to  a  tree  lower  down,  the  sled  and  team 


294  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

shot  down  the  mountainside  until  they  came  to  a  sap- 
ling. 

The  team  went  one  side,  the  sled  the  other,  bending 
the  sapling  down  until  the  traces  slid  some  twenty 
feet  up  its  trunk,  when  it  flew  back,  dangling  the  out- 
fit in  the  air.  A  few  blows  with  an  ax  ended  this 
difficulty. 

On  finally  reaching  the  river,  the  sight  of  a  clear 
sheet  of  ice  caused  the  men  to  shout  and  the  dogs  to 
bark  with  joy  at  the  prospect  of  a  stretch  of  easy 
traveling.  There  was  a  general  scamper  to  get  to  it. 

The  first  team  promptly  went  down,  for  the  ice  was 
only  a  quarter  of  an  inch  thick,  having  evidently  just 
formed.  The  water  happened  to  be  only  two  feet 
deep,  so  the  team  was  fished  out  safely. 

One  evening  they  had  just  picked  out  a  nice  spot 
to  camp  when  they  were  startled  by  the  thunder  of  an 
avalanche  above  them.  While  they  were  discussing 
the  chances  of  its  passing  near  them,  a  bowlder  of 
perhaps  ten  tons'  weight,  loosened  by  the  avalanche, 
came  hurtling  'down  the  mountain  straight  toward 
them. 

By  good  luck  a  bunch  of  large  pines  turned  it 
aside  just  before  it  reached  the  group,  or  that  par- 
ticular survey  would  have  ended  right  there. 

This  valley,  like  the  other,  came  to  an  abrupt  end. 
By  climbing  two  thousand  feet  a  pass  could  be 
reached,  so  Jarvis  decided  to  go  on  to  Edmonton. 
The  second  morning,  after  crossing  the  divide  to  the 
eastern  slope  of  the  Rockies,  they  came  suddenly  to 
the  brink  of  a  fall  two  hundred  and  ten  feet  high. 

There  was  no  sound  of  falling  water  to  warn  them. 
If  the  morning  had  been  misty,  as  the  mornings 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         295 

usually  were,  they  must  inevitably  have  walked  over 
the  edge  of  the  abyss.  As  it  was,  they  discovered 
later,  on  looking  up  from  below,  that  the  whole  party 
had  stood  on  a  projecting  ledge  of  ice  and  snow  only 
two  feet  thick. 

A  little  farther  on  in  this  same  canon,  in  going 
down  a  precipitous  descent,  one  of  the  sleds  became 
unmanageable,  and  shooting  down  the  mountain 
struck  a  log,  crushing  one  of  the  dogs  to  death  and 
splintering  the  sled. 

By  the  time  they  were  fairly  out  of  the  mountains 
the  dogs  were  giving  out.  All  six  men  had  to  go 
ahead  and  break  track.  Even  then  the  dogs  had  to 
wallow  up  to  their  bodies  in  snow. 

Their  course  in  following  the  valley  was  northeast, 
instead  of  southeast  as  it  should  have  been  if  the 
stream  they  had  struck  was  the  Smoky  River.  They 
began  to  fear  that  they  were  following  the  Pease 
River  toward  Hudson  Bay  and  starvation. 

Nearly  every  day  the  dismal  howls  of  the  dogs  an- 
nounced that  another  had  dropped  dead  of  hunger 
and  exhaustion.  It  was  now  March  6,  and  their  sup- 
plies were  almost  gone,  and  there  was  no  game  to  be 
seen. 

So  they  cached  two  of  the  sleds  and  the  instruments 
and  taking  one  sled  struck  across  country  in  the 
direction  they  thought  Jasper  House,  a  Hudson  Bay 
Company  post,  lay.  Each  man  carried  his  blankets 
and  share  of  the  provisions,  leaving  the  worn-out  dogs 
only  fifteen  pounds  of  fish  each  to  drag. 

It  was  now  a  scramble  for  life  over  an  exceedingly 
rough  country,  with  the  certainty  of  death  staring 
them  in  the  face  if  they  failed  to  find,  within  a  short 


296  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

time,  the  one  place  where  there  was  help.  Every 
morning  one  or  more  of  the  dogs  was  too  weak  to 
rise  and  had  to  be  shot  to  cut  his  sufferings  short. 

One  night  the  Indians  gave  up  in  despair  and  de- 
clared, with  tears  and  great  lamentation,  that  they 
were  lost.  It  required  all  the  eloquence  of  the  white 
men  to  reassure  them,  particularly  as  the  white  men 
were  by  no  means  sure  themselves  that  they  would  get 
out  of  the  scrape. 

On  March  20  the  exhausted  party  stumbled  upon 
Fiddle  River  depot  on  Lac  a  ,Brule,  which  had  been 
established  by  the  survey  and  left  in  charge  of  some 
Indians.  Here  they  found  that  Jasper  House  had 
been  abandoned,  and  that  Lake  St.  Anne,  the  nearest 
Hudson  Bay  Company  post,  was  eleven  days'  travel 
away. 

As  the  Indians  were  nearly  out  of  provisions,  and 
the  dogs  too  exhausted  to  go  any  further,  Jarvis  and 
his  party  were  obliged  to  struggle  on  with  their  out- 
fits on  their  backs.  The  last  three  days  before  reach- 
ing Lake  St.  Anne  they  had  to  flounder  through  the 
snow  without  a  morsel  of  food. 

They  became  so  exhausted  that  at  times  they  were 
unable  to  push  one  snow-shoe  before  another,  but 
stood  still,  feebly  marking  time.  They  finally  reached 
the  post  in  a  dazed  condition  April  1,  after  a  journey 
of  nine  hundred  miles  on  snow-shoes  in  a  temperature 
that  averaged  thirty-nine  degrees  below  zero  for  the 
four  months  they  were  out. 

There  was  a  vast  amount  of  work  of  this  character 
to  be  done.  To  say  nothing  of  the  routes  that  proved 
to  be  hopeless  upon  first  examination,  every  foot  of 
the  long  route  through  the  mountains  which  was 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         297 

finally  selected  had  to  be  gone  over  six  times  before 
the  graders  arrived. 

First  there  was  the  exploration.  Next  came  the 
exploratory  survey;  then  the  revised  survey;  the  trial 
location;  the  location  survey;  and  lastly  the  revised 
location. 

Seven  years  these  surveys  lasted,  with  twenty  to 
twenty-five  parties  in  the  field,  winter  and  summer. 
In  that  time  the  engineers  examined  forty-six  thou- 
sand miles  of  territory,  most  of  which  had  never  be- 
fore been  seen  by  a  white  man,  at  a  cost  of  three 
million  five  hundred  thousand  dollars. 

When  at  last  their  great  task  was  done,  it  was  well 
done,  for  they  had  found  passes  through  the  moun- 
tains three  thousand  feet  lower  than  those  on  any  of 
the  American  lines.  In  only  three  places  on  the  line 
were  there  heavy  grades,  and  in  each  of  these  places 
they  were  compressed  within  twenty  miles  instead  of 
being  scattered  over  hundreds  of  miles  as  on  the 
American  lines. 

Some  idea  of  the  difficulty  of  the  work  may  be 
gathered  from  the  fact  that  for  a  long  time  it  seemed 
impossible  to  find  a  way  across  the  Gold  Range,  the 
third  range  of  mountains  from  the  plains,  until  Major 
Rogers  one  day  followed  an  eagle  which  led  him  to 
the  only  practicable  pass  in  the  entire  range. 

The  news  of  this  discovery  seemed  too  good  to  be 
true.  Chief  Engineer  Fleming  would  not  believe  it 
until  he  had  been  personally  conducted  through  the 
pass  by  the  triumphant  Major  Rogers.  Afterwards 
the  board  of  directors  voted  a  present  of  five  thousand 
dollars  to  the  Major  in  recognition  of  the  great  serv- 
ice he  had  performed.  A  like  reward  was  voted  to 


298  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

Engineer  Sykes,  who  laid  out  a  loop  by  which  some 
steep  grades  and  heavy  rock  cuts  were  avoided. 
Good  work  by  other  engineers  was  rewarded  by  a 
number  of  lesser  bonuses. 

Before  the  surveys  were  completed  the  work  of 
construction  was  begun.  Instead  of  undertaking  a 
continuous  line,  though,  the  Mackenzie  government 
pursued  a  makeshift,  haphazard  policy  of  building 
short  stretches  of  railroad  to  connect  lakes  and  navi- 
gable rivers.  That  did  not  suit  the  people,  and  the 
Mackenzie  administration  gave  place  to  Sir  John 
Macdonald,  who  was  for  building  a  transcontinental 
railroad  without  any  more  nonsense. 

The  Macdonald  government  accepted  the  offer  of 
a  syndicate  composed  of  Donald  Smith,  governor  of 
the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  who  began  life  as  an 
employee  of  the  company  in  Labrador  at  a  salary  of 
one  hundred  dollars  a  year;  George  Stephen,  his 
cousin,  president  of  the  Bank  of  Montreal;  James  J. 
Hill,  with  whom  the  two  had  been  associated  in  the 
conversion  of  the  abandoned  streak  of  rust  in  the 
Minnesota  woods  into  the  vigorous  and  profitable 
St.  Paul,  Minneapolis  and  Manitoba  Railroad ;  Dun- 
can Maclntyre,  the  head  of  the  Intercolonial  Rail- 
way, who  had  been  a  Montreal  mechant;  R.  B.  An- 
gus, and  two  other  firms  of  bankers,  one  in  London, 
and  the  other  in  Paris. 

Under  the  terms  of  the  contract  which  was  signed 
October  20,  1880,  the  syndicate  undertook  to  have  a 
railroad  in  operation  from  Montreal  to  Vancouver 
ten  years  from  that  date  in  consideration  of  $25,- 
000,000  cash,  25,000,000  acres  of  land,  and  712  miles 
of  railroad  in  various  stages  of  completion.  No  duty 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         299 

was  to  be  levied  on  material  imported,  and  the  com- 
pany was  to  be  free  from  taxes  and  competition  for 
twenty  years. 

Construction  was  begun  by  the  company  the  fol- 
lowing spring,  but  only  one  hundred  and  sixty-five 
miles  were  built  that  season.  This  was  too  slow  for 
the  syndicate,  so  they  turned  to  the  United  States  for 
help.  W.  C.  Van  Home,  of  Illinois,  who  had  risen 
from  telegraph  operator  to  the  presidency  of  the  Chi- 
cago, Milwaukee  and  St.  Paul,  then  the  largest  rail- 
road system  in  the  country,  was  engaged  as  general 
manager. 

An  American  firm,  Langdon  &  Shepard,  of  St. 
Paul,  was  induced  to  undertake  the  contract  for 
building  the  six  hundred  and  seventy  miles  from  Flat 
Creek,  which  is  one  hundred  and  seven-five  miles  west 
of  Winnipeg,  to  Calgary,  and  another  American, 
James  Ross,  was  installed  by  the  contractors  as  gen- 
eral manager  of  construction. 

Then  ensued  the  most  spectacular  bit  of  railroad 
building  ever  seen.  March  11,  1882,  the  day  the  con- 
tract was  signed,  Langdon  &  Shepard  advertised  for 
three  thousand  men  and  two  thousand  teams.  Sixty 
sub-contractors  were  set  to  work  on  sections  of  one 
mile  or  more,  according  to  their  means  and  ability. 

By  the  time  the  grass  was  green  an  army  of  ten 
thousand  men  was  at  work  on  the  great  prairie.  The 
work  was  done  on  the  English  plan;  that  is,  the  con- 
struction was  solid  and  substantial  as  it  was  possible 
to  make  it,  and  not  a  rough  temporary  track.  It  was 
heavy  work,  averaging  seventeen  thousand  cubic 
yards  per  mile  of  earth  removal  across  the  prairies. 

As  soon  as  a  sub-contractor  finished  his  job  he 


300  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

moved  forward  one  hundred  to  one  hundred  and  fifty 
miles,  where  he  began  on  another  section.  In  an- 
other six  weeks  he  was  pretty  sure  to  hear  the  loco- 
motive behind  him.  In  advance  of  the  track-layers 
were  bridge  gangs,  as  large  as  could  work  to  advan- 
tage, divided  into  day  and  night  shifts. 

As  every  stick  of  timber  had  to  be  hauled  from 
Rat  Portage,  one  hundred  and  forty  miles  east  of 
Winnipeg,  the  bridge-builders  could  not  work  more 
than  eight  or  ten  miles  ahead  of  the  track-layers. 
Timber  was  unloaded  at  night  and  hauled  to  the 
front  so  as  not  to  interfere  with  other  work. 

Where  not  a  sign  of  preparation  or  a  stick  of  tim- 
ber could  be  seen  one  day,  the  next  day  would  show 
two  or  three  spans  of  a  nicely  finished  bridge,  and  on 
the  second  day  trains  would  be  running  over  it. 

Following  the  bridge-builders  came  the  track-lay- 
ing gang,  the  most  picturesque  feature  of  railroad 
building.  This  gang  consisted  of  three  hundred  men 
and  thirty-five  teams,  working  in  as  perfect  accord 
as  a  fine  machine.  Floods  in  Red  River  Valley,  the 
only  route  over  which  supplies  could  come,  delayed 
work  so  much  that  by  the  end  of  June  only  seventy 
miles  of  track  had  been  laid. 

But  in  the  next  six  months  349  miles  were  laid. 
Next  year  376  miles  were  laid,  making  a  total  for  the 
syndicate's  three  years  of  962  miles  of  main  line  and 
66  miles  of  siding.  The  record  month  was  July, 
1883,  when  92  miles  were  laid. 

The  biggest  day's  work,  6.38  miles  of  track,  was 
done  on  July  28,  1883.  That  day  2,120  rails  weigh- 
ing 604  tons  were  laid.  To  accomplish  this  feat  re- 
quired twelve  men  to  unload  rails,  twelve  to  load 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         301 

them  on  dump  cars,  and  ten  men,  five  on  each  side, 
to  lay  the  rails  in  place. 

Two  distributors  of  angle-bars  and  bolts  handled 
4,240  plates  and  8,480  bolts.  Following  them  fifteen 
bolters  put  in  an  average  of  565  bolts  each.  Thirty- 
two  spikers,  with  a  nipper  to  each  pair,  drove  63,000 
spikes  distributed  by  four  peddlers. 

The  lead  and  gauge  spikers  each  drove  2,120  spikes 
with  an  average  of  four  blows  each,  which  required 
an  average  speed  of  600  blows  per  hour  for  fourteen 
hours. 

Sixteen  thousand  ties  were  unloaded,  loaded  on 
wagons,  and  hauled  to  place  by  thirty-two  men  and 
thirty-two  teams.  On  the  grade  eight  men  unloaded 
and  distributed  the  ties,  four  others  spaced  them,  two 
spaced  the  joint  ties,  while  still  another  two  men  ad- 
justed the  misplaced  ties  immediately  ahead  of  the 
leading  spikers. 

Four  iron-car  boys  and  two  horses  hauled  the  iron 
to  the  front.  The  side  track  gang  put  in  a  siding 
2,000  feet  long  that  day. 

To  handle  the  commissariat  for  so  large  an  army 
distributed  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  ter- 
ritory and  constantly  on  the  move  was  no  small  task. 
The  horses  required  1,600  bushels  of  oats,  and  the 
men  two  carloads  of  provisions  a  day,  all  of  which 
had  to  be  unloaded  and  hauled  where  it  was  needed. 
The  men  were  fed  on  the  best  that  money  could  buy. 
There  were  ham,  bacon,  corned  beef,  and  spiced 
rolls  from  Milwaukee,  while  a  butcher's  outfit  sup- 
plied the  camps  with  fresh  meat  at  least  three  times 
a  week.  There  were  blacksmiths,  wagon  and  harness 
makers,  shoemakers,  and  tailors,  a  dispensary  and  five 


302  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

doctors  to  be  supplied  and  moved  forward  with  their 
outfits  every  time  the  camp  moved. 

In  one  important  particular  the  building  of  the 
Canadian  Pacific  was  very  different  from  the  build- 
ing of  any  other  railroad  in  the  wilderness.  There 
was  no  rowdyism,  no  drunkenness,  no  gambling,  no 
daily  murder.  As  one  of  the  delighted  American 
sub-contractors  enthusiastically  expressed  it,  this  was 
due: 

"  Not  to  rough  usage  and  old-fashioned  Western 
lynch  law,  but  to  law  made  by  the  Queen  and  lived 
up  to  and  enforced  by  her  people.  No  liquor  is  al- 
lowed in  the  country,  and  under  no  pretext  can  any 
be  smuggled  in. 

"  There  are  none  of  the  roughs  and  rowdies  hang- 
ing around  the  camp  so  common  on  the  other  side  of 
the  line.  There  are  no  dance  houses,  no  saloons, 
nothing  to  inflame  and  brutalize  men  and  fleece  them 
out  of  their  money. 

'  When  a  man  breaks  the  law  here  justice  is  dealt 
out  to  him  a  heap  quicker  and  in  larger  chunks  than 
he  has  been  accustomed  to  in  the  States,  and  he  has  a 
small  show  when  the  guilt  is  once  fastened  home.  All 
trains  are  examined,  and  every  arrival  is  known.  If 
a  man's  reasons  for  being  in  camp  are  not  satisfac- 
tory, his  stay  is  very  brief. 

"  For  the  first  offense  of  bringing  in  liquor  there 
is  a  fine  of  fifty  dollars  and  costs,  and  the  liquor  is 
destroyed.  Next  time  he  pays  two  hundred  dollars 
and  heavier  costs ;  the  third  time  he  gets  a  fine  of  four 
hundred  dollars,  and,  what  is  worse,  six  months  in  a 
fort  with  the  inconvenience  of  a  ball  and  chain  riv- 
eted to  his  leg. 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         308 

"  The  moment  a  complaint  is  made  of  a  dealer  hav- 
ing liquor  under  any  of  its  aliases,  three  or  four 
mounted  police  make  their  appearance  at  Mr.  Deal- 
er's shanty,  and  if  there  is  any  truth  in  the  complaint 
he  is  provided  with  a  conveyance  to  a  fort,  perhaps  a 
hundred  miles  off,  where  in  the  absence  of  friends  and 
free  from  outside  influence  or  interference  he  takes  his 
dose  without  fear  or  favoritism,  and  the  medicine  is 
generally  a  certain  cure.  I  tell  you  there  is  a  way 
to  do  it,  and  they  are  doing  it  right  from  the  scratch." 

Langdon  &  Shepard  reached  the  summit  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains  in  December,  1884.  Their  men 
were  employed  by  another  contracting  firm,  and  the 
work  went  forward  without  interruption. 

While  the  Langdon  &  Shepard  forces  were  mak- 
ing their  remarkable  dash  toward  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, some  extraordinarily  difficult  work  was  being 
done  along  the  northern  shore  of  Lake  Superior.  To 
get  through  this  wild  country,  2,500,000  cubic  yards 
of  the  hardest  rock  known  to  engineers,  syenite  and 
trap,  had  to  be  removed. 

To  do  this  required  the  ceaseless  efforts  of  12,000 
men  and  2,000  teams  working  day  and  night,  winter 
and  summer,  for  three  years. 

The  task  of  supplying  this  great  force  the  year 
round  in  a  region  so  nearly  inaccessible  was  one  of 
extraordinary  difficulty.  The  severe  cold  of  winter, 
which  greatly  increased  the  difficulties  of  transporta- 
tion, also  acted  as  a  tonic  which  so  sharpened  the  ap- 
petites of  the  men  that  they  consumed  an  average  of 
five  pounds  of  food  a  day,  or  a  total  of  four  hundred 
and  twenty  thousand  pounds  a  week  for  all  the 
camps. 


304  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

To  supply  current  needs  and  to  lay  in  a  supply 
that  would  last  through  the  seven  months  of  winter, 
when  communication  with  the  outer  world  was  cut  off, 
twelve  steamers  were  kept  busy  while  navigation  was 
open.  The  northern  shore  of  Lake  Superior  is  so 
wild  and  rough  that  it  was  impracticable  to  build 
good  wagon  roads;  so  small  boats  had  to  be  used 
whenever  possible  to  distribute  supplies.  Michipico- 
ten  would  have  been  the  most  convenient  point  for  a 
central  depot,  but  it  was  so  exposed  that  the  wharf 
and  warehouse  were  twice  washed  away.  Then  the 
landing  was  moved  to  a  point  four  miles  west. 

In  order  to  reach  the  line  of  the  railroad  it  was 
necessary  to  make  a  portage  road  seven  miles  in 
length  to  a  small  lake  six  and  a  half  miles  long, 
which  was  navigated  by  a  steamboat  that  had  to  be 
built  on  the  spot.  At  the  farther  end  of  this  lake 
the  supplies  were  again  transferred  from  a  boat  to 
wagons  for  a  sixteen-mile  haul  over  an  extremely 
rough  road,  which  had  been  made  passable  only  by 
an  immense  expenditure  of  labor  and  dynamite.  A 
second  lake,  eleven  miles  long,  was  navigated  by  an- 
other steamboat,  then  came  a  stretch  of  two  and  a 
half  miles  of  exceedingly  bad  road  to  the  third  lake, 
which  was  traversed  by  still  another  steamboat  that 
had  to  be  built  out  in  the  heart  of  the  wilderness. 
This  third  steamboat,  by  making  a  voyage  of  twenty- 
six  miles,  could  land  the  supplies  at  a  point  from 
which  they  could  be  distributed  to  the  camps.  Every 
pound  of  provisions  and  other  supplies  required  in 
building  the  road  for  a  hundred  miles  east  and  west 
from  this  last  landing  had  to  be  handled  through  this 
laborious  routine  of  six  transfers  from  boat  to  wagon 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         305 

and  wagon  to  boat  again.  In  the  winter  three  hun- 
dred dog  teams  were  kept  busy  distributing  supplies. 

A  shelf  twenty  feet  wide  and  eleven  miles  long  had 
to  be  blasted  through  the  living  rock  along  the  coast 
in  one  stretch  of  this  difficult  road.  Five  tunnels  were 
driven,  and  ten  rivers,  one  of  them  a  stream  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  yards  wide,  had  to  be  diverted  from 
their  natural  courses  through  rock  tunnels. 

This  tremendous  amount  of  blasting  required  one 
hundred  tons  of  dynamite  a  month  for  fifteen  months. 
It  was  all  manufactured  on  the  works  with  such  care 
that  not  a  single  life  was  lost  in  the  making  or  the 
handling. 

When  it  was  all  over  it  was  found  that  ninety  miles 
of  road  had  cost  two  million  dollars.  The  worst  mile 
cost  seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars.  But 
the  work  was  so  well  done  that  the  maximum  grade 
was  fifty-two  feet  to  the  mile,  and  there  was  no  curve 
greater  than  six  degrees. 

The  first  use  to  which  this  stretch  of  road  was  put 
was  to  transport  troops  west  to  help  put  down  the  Biel 
rebellion  in  April,  1885.  The  road  not  being  com- 
pleted, the  soldiers  were  hauled  over  the  unballasted 
track  in  construction  trains,  and  picked  their  way  as 
best  they  could  over  the  gap.  Their  unexpected  ap- 
pearance at  the  front  did  much  to  quell  the  uprising. 
On  returning  in  the  fall,  the  soldiers  found  sleeping 
and  dining  cars  running  regularly  over  as  fine  a  road- 
bed as  there  was  in  the  Dominion.  Bancroft  Library 

Still  another  army  of  6,000  men,  principally  China- 
men, were  working  eastward  from  Kamloops,  250 
miles  east  of  Vancouver,  the  end  of  the  Pacific  section 
of  government-built  road,  under  Contractor  Onder- 


306  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

donk.  But  the  Chinamen  spent  most  of  their  time 
around  fires  in  cold  weather.  Only  white  men  were 
of  any  use  when  real  hard  work  was  to  be  done. 

Some  wonderful  engineering  work  was  required  to 
carry  the  road  through  the  mountains.  In  the  sixty- 
two  miles  from  the  summit  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
to  the  valley  of  the  Columbia  River,  the  Kicking 
Horse  River,  which  the  line  follows,  falls  two  thou- 
sand seven  hundred  and  seventy-eight  feet.  The 
river  had  to  be  crossed  nine  times,  while  there  were 
three  hundred  and  seventy  thousand  cubic  feet  of 
rock  to  be  removed,  exclusive  of  tunnel  work.  All 
drilling  had  to  be  done  by  hand,  because  it  was  not 
possible  to  get  machinery  over  the  long  and  difficult 
trail. 

On  the  Pacific  slope  of  the  Selkirks  the  descent  is 
two  thousand  three  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  forty- 
two  miles.  The  Cascade  Range  was  passed  by  fol- 
lowing narrow  ledges  along  the  Fraser  River  through 
an  endless  succession  of  tunnels  and  over  some  of  the 
highest  timber  trestles  ever  constructed.  One  of  these 
was  two  hundred  and  ninety-six  feet  high  and  four 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  long.  All  food,  material,  and 
supplies  had  to  be  transported  long  distances  through 
a  wilderness,  and  finally  through  mountains  which 
Sir  Edwin  Arnold  declared  surpassed  the  Alps,  the 
Himalayas,  and  the  Andes  in  magnificence.  And  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  more  attractive  a 
mountain  is  to  the  aesthete,  the  more  troublesome  it  is 
to  the  engineer  and  to  the  humbler  mortals  upon 
whom  devolves  the  necessary  duty  of  getting  bags  of 
flour  and  sides  of  bacon  over  it. 

Some  curious  obstacles  were  encountered  at  various 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         307 

places  which  worried  the  engineers  and  cost  the  com- 
pany money.  For  instance,  two  hundred  and  seven- 
teen miles  east  of  Winnipeg  the  line  crosses  the  Bar- 
clay muskeg,  which  is  the  Indian  name  for  bog.  This 
muskeg  is  a  huge  basin  filled  to  a  depth  of  two  hun- 
dred feet  with  material  dense  enough  to  support  the 
track,  but  which  quivers  like  a  bowl  of  jelly  whenever 
a  train  strikes  it.  The  surface  is  thrown  into  waves 
five  or  six  inches  high  by  the  passage  of  a  train.  This 
jelly-like  quivering  causes  the  rails  to  creep,  in  some 
instances  as  much  as  two  feet  four  inches  under  a  sin- 
gle train.  Track  bolts  were  frequently  sheared  off 
by  the  creeping  movement,  and  it  was  found  neces- 
sary to  station  watchmen  at  the  muskeg  day  and  night 
with  short  pieces  of  rail  to  repair  the  gaps  left  by  the 
creeping  until  the  engineers  could  find  a  way  to  an- 
chor the  track  securely. 

Again,  in  going  down  the  western  slope  of  the 
Rockies,  the  engineers  wanted  to  tunnel  a  mountain 
spur,  but  the  mountain  proved  to  be  of  quicksand 
which  filled  up  the  tunnel  as  soon  as  it  was  finished. 
After  the  third  attempt  the  engineers  decided  to  go 
around. 

On  the  Thompson  River,  two  hundred  miles  east 
of  Vancouver,  irrigation  on  some  mountain  terraces 
had  caused  a  series  of  extraordinary  landslides  before 
the  railroad  was  built.  In  the  largest  of  these  a  mass 
of  earth  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  in  area  and  four 
hundred  feet  in  depth  slid  down  into  the  river  until  it 
was  stopped  by  the  opposite  mountain  wall,  damming 
the  river  to  a  height  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  feet 
and  forming  a  lake  twelve  miles  long.  As  soon  as  the 
river  rose  to  the  height  of  the  dam  it  began  flowing 


308  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

over  the  top,  and  in  due  time  scoured  out  its  bed 
again.  There  were  a  number  of  smaller  slides  in  the 
same  locality. 

When  the  railroad  builders  came  along  they  found 
to  their  astonishment  that  they  could  not  make  the 
track  stay  where  they  put  it.  The  whole  surface  of 
the  earth,  lubricated  by  the  continual  seepage  from 
the  irrigating  ditches,  was  steadily  sliding  toward  the 
river  over  the  slippery  substratum  of  clay  silt.  One 
morning  they  found  the  track  had  moved  toward  the 
river  eight  feet  and  had  sunk  four  feet  below  grade 
during  the  night.  Watchmen  had  to  be  stationed  day 
and  night  to  watch  the  wandering  track  until  the 
engineers  could  find  a  way  to  outwit  the  elusive  moun- 
tainside. 

Indeed,  the  building  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  Rail- 
way was  one  long  struggle  with  natural  obstacles  as 
formidable  as  they  were  unique.  Like  the  pioneers 
who  first  grappled  with  the  problems  of  the  railroad, 
the  engineers  of  the  Canadian  Pacific  had  no  prece- 
dents to  guide  them,  and  not  even  any  facts  on  which 
to  base  their  plans,  for  the  whole  of  the  route  lay 
through  an  unknown  wilderness.  It  was  evident, 
for  example,  that  the  precipitation  in  the  Selkirk 
Mountains  was  enormous,  and  that  snow-slides,  or 
avalanches,  were  frequent  and  appallingly  destruc- 
tive. In  order  to  learn  just  how  formidable  these 
snow-slides  were  and  to  determine  the  position, 
character,  and  extent  of  snow-sheds  required  to  pro- 
tect the  line  from  them,  parties  of  engineers,  well  pro- 
vided with  meteorological  instruments,  snow-shoes, 
and  dog  trains,  passed  a  winter  in  the  mountains. 

The  snowfall  was  found  to  be  tremendous,  amount- 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         309 

ing  in  one  winter  to  an  aggregate  of  forty-three  feet 
six  inches.  In  a  single  storm  of  six  days'  duration 
eight  and  a  half  feet  of  snow  fell.  Owing  to  the 
warm  Chinook  winds  and  winter  rains  the  snow  in 
these  mountains  packs  down  into  dense,  heavy  masses, 
a  cubic  foot  of  it  weighing  from  twenty-five  to  forty- 
five  pounds.  The  slightest  disturbance,  such  as  a 
man  or  an  animal  walking  across  the  lower  edge  of  a 
steep  slope,  or  even  the  vibrations  of  the  atmosphere 
caused  by  talking  in  a  loud  voice,  was  sufficient  to  set 
a  slide,  sometimes  amounting  to  a  quarter  of  a  million 
cubic  yards,  in  motion.  Usually  the  slides  started  by 
their  own  weight.  With  a  crash  and  a  roar  the  great 
mass,  weighing  from  a  hundred  thousand  to  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand  tons,  would  dart  down  the 
mountainside  in  a  great  white  flash,  sweeping  trees, 
loose  bowlders  weighing  several  tons,  and  everything 
else  down  to  the  solid  granite  of  the  mountain  core, 
with  it.  So  great  was  the  force  of  these  slides  that 
they  would  cross  the  valleys  and  be  carried  up  the 
opposite  slope  a  hundred  feet  or  so. 

The  most  remarkable  effects  were  caused  by  the 
cyclones  induced  by  the  tremendous  velocity  of  these 
enormous  masses.  These  cyclones,  extending  for  a 
distance  of  a  hundred  yards  on  each  side  and  in  front 
and  for  a  hundred  feet  above  the  slides,  were  called 
"  flurries."  Huge  trees,  several  feet  in  diameter,  that 
happened  to  be  caught  in  the  vortex  of  these  flurries, 
would  be  uprooted;  others  outside  the  vortex  would 
be  cut  off  as  by  a  chain  shot.  A  man  who  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  be  caught  in  a  flurry  was  picked  up  and 
whirled  and  twisted  spirally  and  finally  dropped,  a 
limp  mass,  without  a  bruise  or  break  in  skin  or  cloth- 


310  WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

ing,  yet  with  every  bone  in  his  body  broken  or  dislo- 
cated. 

The  information  gathered  by  the  observers  led  to 
the  building  of  seven  miles  of  snow-sheds,  in  which 
26,000,000  feet  of  timber  was  used,  at  a  cost  of 
$3,000,000,  to  protect  the  tracks.  The  sheds  were 
built  of  large  square  timbers,  with  their  roofs  on  a 
level  with  the  mountain  slope,  so  they  would  offer  the 
least  possible  resistance  to  the  snow-slides.  As  a  fur- 
ther precaution  magazines  of  provisions,  oil  and  coal 
for  the  coaches  were  established  at  intervals  of  ten  or 
twelve  miles,  throughout  the  Selkirks,  so  that  if  a 
train  should  have  the  misfortune  to  be  detained  by 
snow  blockades  it  would  never  be  more  than  six  miles 
from  supplies.  These  magazines  have  proved,  how- 
ever, to  be  of  little  use  except  for  such  moral  support 
as  they  may  provide,  for  the  engineers  who  planned 
the  snow-sheds  did  their  work  so  skilfully  that  the 
Canadian  Pacific  has  experienced  even  less  trouble 
from  snow  blockades  than  lines  farther  south. 

Nor  were  the  engineers  and  the  contractors  the  only 
ones  who  were  having  a  hard  time  building  the  Cana- 
dian Pacific.  The  men  behind  the  engineers  were 
ensconced  in  comfortable  offices  away  back  in  Mon- 
treal, where  they  never  had  to  give  a  thought  to  the 
chances  of  the  next  instalment  of  bacon  and  beans 
getting  through  in  time  to  keep  them  from  starving 
to  death;  but  they  had  to  study  very  hard  upon  prob- 
lems scarcely  less  vital.  In  1884,  when  the  great 
work  was  well  along  toward  completion,  there  came  a 
crisis  that  cost  the  officers  and  directors  some  sleep- 
less nights,  and  very  nearly  swamped  the  undertak- 
ing with  all  hands  involved  in  it. 


ROMANCE  OF  A  GREAT  RAILROAD         311 

All  the  money  obtained  from  the  government  and 
from  sales  of  stock  had  been  spent.  Stephen,  Smith, 
and  the  other  members  of  the  syndicate  had  pledged 
all  their  earthly  possessions  upon  which  money  could 
be  raised,  and  the  Bank  of  Montreal  was  deeply  in- 
volved. It  should  have  been  easy  to  raise  money 
since  so  much  of  the  road  had  been  built,  and  the  man- 
agement had  been  energetic  and  economical,  but  it 
wasn't.  The  somewhat  numerous  class  which  had 
known  all  along  that  the  road  could  never  be  built 
now  had  the  public  ear,  and  all  attempts  to  raise 
money  were  viewed  askance.  The  fate  of  the  Do- 
minion, as  well  as  of  the  railroad  company,  hung  in 
the  balance  for  a  time. 

As  a  last  resort  the  government  was  asked  for  a 
loan  of  twenty-two  million  five  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars. It  hesitated.  Public  opinion  was  intensely 
wrought  up,  and  the  government  could  not  count  on 
its  stanchest  supporters.  Finally  a  secret  loan  was 
advanced  by  the  government,  and  the  crisis  was 
passed.  The  syndicate  proved  itself  worthy  of  this 
mark  of  confidence  by  repaying  every  dollar  of  all 
the  government  loans  before  they  were  due. 

All  obstacles,  natural  and  financial,  were  over- 
come at  last,  however,  and  on  the  1st  of  November, 
1885,  a  train  bearing  some  of  the  directors  and  rail- 
road officials  left  Montreal  while  the  eastern  and  west- 
ern ends  of  the  road  were  still  several  miles  apart. 
When  the  train  reached  Craigellachie,  2,553  miles 
from  Montreal  and  351  miles  from  Vancouver,  only 
one  rail  remained  to  be  put  in  place  in  the  track. 

The  celebration  attending  the  driving  of  the  last 
spike  on  transcontinental  lines  across  the  border  had 


WHEN  RAILROADS  WERE  NEW 

always  been  an  elaborate  and  expensive  one.  The 
admitted  cost  of  the  ceremony  on  the  Northern  Pa- 
cific was  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  thousand  dol- 
lars; the  real  cost  was  probably  more.  But  in  Can- 
ada they  managed  it  differently. 

'  The  last  spike,"  said  General  Manager  Van 
Home,  "  will  be  just  as  good  an  iron  one  as  there  is 
between  Montreal  and  Vancouver.  Any  one  who 
wants  to  see  it  driven  will  have  to  pay  full  fare." 

Such  inhospitable  terms  as  these  had  the  effect  of 
limiting  the  party  who  witnessed  that  historic  event 
to  barely  a  dozen  railroad  officials  and  the  workmen 
who  finished  the  job.  On  November  7,  1885,  Don- 
ald Smith,  a  Scotchman  who  had  begun  life  in  the 
wilderness  at  a  salary  of  one  hundred  dollars  a  year, 
drove  the  last  spike  which  completed  the  Canadian 
Pacific  five  years  before  the  time  specified  in  the  con- 
tract. 

There  was  no  speechmaking,  no  banquet,  no  any- 
thing. When  Smith  had  delivered  the  last  blow  he 
threw  down  the  spike  maul  and  then  the  little  party 
went  fishing. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Accommodation  train,  193 
"Actual    operation,"    railroad    in, 

193 

Aid  to  railroads,  82,  15T,  195 
Alleghenies,  crossing  the,  134 
Allen,  Horatio,  12 
Allen,  Nehemiah,  213 
Ames,   Oakes,   241 
Angus,  R.  B.,  298 
Anti-friction  journal,  Winans,  49 
Armed    forces    race    for    a    pass, 

271 

Army,  railroad  building,  252,  299 
Army,  railroad,  maintained,  280 
Arnold,  Sir  Edwin,  306 
Aspinwall,  W.  H.,  68 
Atchison,   Topeka   and   Santa   F6, 
chartered,  260 

completed  to  Colorado,  264 

dividends  stopped,  282 

extension  to  the  Pacific,  281 

first  car  into  New  Mexico,  272 

first  section  built,  260 

first  conception  of,  260 

land  grant  to,  261 

leases  Denver  and  Rio  Grande, 
276 

lynch  law  on,  262 

plans  for  Colorado,  268 

receivership,  283 

ridiculed  by  financiers,  260 

seizes  Grand  Canyon  of  the  Ar- 
kansas, 274 

Southern  Pacific  outmaneuvered, 

270 

Auction,  railroad  at,  186 
Ayers,  Conductor  Henry,  85 

Bailey,  James,  237 
Baldwin,  M.  W.,  115,  199 
Baltimore,  commercial  supremacy, 

33 

Baltimore,  valuation  of,  in  1827,  2 
Baltimore  and  Ohio,  Baring  Broth- 
ers, buy  bonds,  60 

chartered  in  Pennsylvania,  143 

cost,  2 

extension  to  Cumberland,  57 


Baltimore  and  Ohio: 

extraordinary  engineering  on,  60 

first  discussed,  34 

first  traffic  boom,  50 

how  traffic  grew,  65 

incorporated,  38 

McLane,  Louis,  president,  58 

new  line  to  the  Ohio,  66 

opened  to  Parkersburg,  66 

opening  to  Piedmont,  60 

opened  to  Wheeling,  62 

rebuilding,  58 

remarkable   grades   surmounted, 
62 

Swann,  Thomas,  president,  60 

switchback    terrifies    passengers, 
64 

banquet,    remarkable,    at    Balti- 
more, 72 

Bargains  in  charters,  207 
Barrier  car,  25 
Beach,  George  K.,  260 
Bell  cord,  origin  of,  84 
Benton,  Thomas,  229 
Benton,  town  of,  249 
Bernard,    Gen.    Simon,   33 
Berth,  proper  charge  for,  176 
Best  Friend  of  Charleston,  24 
Binney,  Horace,  114 
Blackmail  of  Union  Pacific,  242 
Board     of    canal    commissioners, 

Pennsylvania,  117 
Boats  on  railroads,  139 
Boiler,  wooden,  3 
Brakemen,  hardships  of,  223 
Bridal     tour,    first     railroad,    in- 
fluence of,  75 
Bridge    across    Mississippi,    first, 

224 

"  Brigade  of  cars,"  42 
Broad  gauge  route  to  the  Mississ- 
ippi, 109 

Brooks,  John  W.,  205 
Brown,  George,  34 
Bryant,  Gridley,  13 
Buchanan,  president,  68,  74 
"Buffalo  Railroad,"  the,  156 
Buffalo-Cleveland,  rail  route,  214 


315 


316 


INDEX 


Buffalo  road,  completed  piece- 
meal, 168 

Buying  railroads  without  capital, 
205 

Cabs,  origin  of  locomotive,  126 

Cameron,  Simon,  102 

Campbell,  Henry  R.,  117 

Canadian  Pacific  Railway,  audac- 
ity of  project,  285 
Cascade  Range,  passage  of,  306 
dangers  of  survey,  287 
difficult  construction  on,  303 
dissensions  over,  285 
eagle  reveals  pass,  297 
engineering,  wonderful,  306 
forest  fires,  surveyors  burned  in, 

287 

grievances    of    British     Colum- 
bians, 286 

Indians  assist  in  surveys,  288 
landslides,  extraordinary,  307 
Liberals  oppose,  285 
loan,  secret  government,  311 
obstacles,  curious,  306 
project  overthrows  governments, 

286 

provision  magazines  on,  310 
public  opinion  wrought  up  over, 

311 

quicksands  fill  tunnels,  307 
rails,  creeping,  307 
remarkable  winter  survey,  290 
Selkirks,  descent  of,  306 
summit  of  Rockies  reached,  303 
snowsheds  on,  310 
supplies,  transporting,  in  wilder- 
ness, 304 

survey,  remarkable  winter,  290 
surveys  begun,  287 
surveys,  hardships  of,  289 
syndicate  to  construct,  298 
tracklaying  on,  fast,  300 
wagon  road  as  a  substitute  for, 
286 

Canal  boats  on  railroad,  189 

Canal  commissioners  oppose  rail- 
roads, 117 

Canal,  Delaware  and  Hudson,  Co., 
12,  19 

Canal,  Erie,  5 

Canals,  Gen.  Bernard's  report  on, 
33 

Canal  period,  5 

Canals,  earliest  plans  for,  5 

Captain  of  industry,  early,  76 

«*  Captains     of     trains"     elected, 


Carroll,  Charles,  of  Carrollton,  40, 

42 

Cars,  attempts  to  introduce  sleep- 
ing, 171 

barrier,  25 

"brigade  of,"  42 

capacity  of,  in  1843,  204 

"Cribs,"  170 

dining,  introduced,  178 

discomforts  of  early,  170 

"  Dromedary,"  53 

early,  described,   163 

eight  wheeled,  Stevenson  &  Co., 
164 

evolution  of,  52 

first  eight  wheeled,  52 

freak,  53 

high  enough  to  stand  up  in,  170 

"  Hyenas,"  170 

Meyers  "  Revolver  train,"  134 

parlor,  introduced,  178 

passenger,  torture  chambers,  163 

"  Pioneer,"  first  Pullman,  173 

"Pleasure,"  193 

"Possum  Belly,"  124 

"Rattlers,"  170 

sleeping,  23 

"Sea  Serpents,"  53 

sent  to  the  Czar,  43 

"  Splendid,"  early,  115 
Casement,  D.C.,  252 
Casenent,   Gen.  Jack  S.,  252 
Celebrations,  at  San  Francisco,  257 

on    completion    of    Cumberland 
Valley,  141 

Great  Railway  of  1857,  68 

on  completion  of  the  Brie,  95, 
100 

on  opening  B.  &  O.  to  Wheeling, 
62 

on  opening  Mohawk  and  Hud- 
son, 150 

on  completion  of  first  transcon- 
tinental, 257 

on  opening  road  to  Philadelphia, 
119 

on  opening  line  to  Washington, 
55 

on  opening  to  Worcester,  8 
Central  Pacific,  first  shipment  of 
rails  for,  238 

grading  begun,  238 

organized,  237 

outwits  Union  Pacific,  255 

struggle  with  natural  obstacles, 
250 

tunneling  under  difficulties,  250 
Change  of  gauge,  102 


INDEX 


317 


Charleston  and  Hamburg  R.  R.,  15, 

22 

Charter,  first  railroad,  38 
Charters,  applications  for,  in  New 

York,  156 

Chase,  Gov.  Salmon  P.,  69 
Cheap  excursions,  first,  organized, 

231 
Cheap   sleeping   cars   not  wanted, 

177 

Chevalier,  Michel,  31 
Cheyenne,  Wyo.,  founded,  244 
Chicago,  first  depot  in,  200 
Chicago's  first  railroad,  197 
Chillicothe,   celebration    at,    70 
Chinese,  as  railroad  laborers,  251 
Cincinnati,  celebration  at,  70 
"Classification   bill,"    famous,   148 
Clay,  Henry,  161,  233 
Clement,  W.  H.,  222 
Cleveland      perceives      dangerous 

rivalry,  222 
Cobden,  Richard,  197 
Colfax,  Schuyler,  208 
Collisions,  between  teams,  137 
Consolidations,  Chicago  and  North- 
western, 202 
first  important,  181 
Lake      Shore      and      Michigan 

Southern,  218 
Michigan  Southern  and  Northern 

Indiana,  213 
New  York  Central  and  Hudson 

River,  184 

Conspiracy  against  a  railroad,  210 
Conspirators  arrested,  212 
Construction,      Canadian     Pacific, 

described,  299 
early,  described,  28,  41,  126,  132, 

160,  165 

extraordinary,  251 
period  of  active,  202 
race,  209 
rapid,  202 
spectacular,  299 
first  syndicate,  93 
Union  Pacific,  described,  253 
Contest  for  supremacy,  203 
Contractors,  dishonest,  49 
murdered  by  workmen,  55 
Dodge,  Lord  &  Co.,  260 
Langdon  &  Shepard,  299,  303 
Page  &  Bacon,  67 
Sheffield  &  Farnam,  202 
Conventions,  New  York,  railroad, 

78,  158,  180 

San  Francisco,  Pacific  Railroad, 
235 


Cooper,  Peter,  45 

Cornerstone,  railroad,  laid,  40 

Corruption  on  state  railroads,  142 

Cost  to  kill  Indians,  258 

Credit  Mobilier,  241 

Credit  stopped  on  railroad,  209 

Creeping  rails,  307 

Crittenden,  J.  J.,  attorney-general, 

95 

Crocker  Brothers,  236 
Czar  gets  idea  of  railroads  from 

America,  44 

Darrell,  Nicholas  W.,  24 
Davis,  Phineas,  49 
Death  of  T.  D.  Judah,  239 
Death  in  the  wilderness,  287 
Delaware  and  Hudson  Canal,  19, 

92 

Delight  over  railroads,  141 
Depot,  first,  in  Chicago,  200 
Designer  of  first  locomotive,  24 
Destitute  settlers  carried  free,  267 
Development,    origin    of    modern 

railroad  methods,  265 
Dickens,  Charles,  rides  on  Portage 

railroad,    138 

Directors  borrow  chairs,  213 
Discipline,  need  of,  recognized,  144 
Discomforts  of  travel,  early,  169 
Diven,  A.  S.,  93 
Dividends  limited  by  law,  114 
Dix,  Gen.  John  A.,  240 
Dodge  City,  261 
Dodge,  Gen.  G.  M.,  240 
Dodge,   Lord   &   Co.,   contractors, 

260 

Dodge,  W.  E.,  92 
Dodsworth's  band,  96 
Dorchester  wants  no  railroads,  11 
Douglas,  Stephen  A.,   196 
Downing,  George,  caterer,  96 
Drought  in   Kansas,  267 
Duer,  John,  79 
Dunlap,  James,  195 
Durant,  T.  C.,  240 
Dust  washing  device  for  coaches, 

89 

Early  railroading  in  Illinois,  193 
Elgar,  John,  inventor  of  switches, 

53 

Ellsworth,  L.  C.,  279 
Emigrant  traffic,  early,  166 
Engineers,  early,  dissipated,  125 
Engineer  on  first  locomotive,  24 
Engineer,  ready  made,  219 
Engineers  assaulted,  279 


318 


INDEX 


English  railroads,  early,  described, 

15 

Erie  Canal  traffic,  36 
Erie,  resists  change  of  gauge,  214 
Erie  "war,"  214 
Erie  Railroad,  the,  75 
appeal  for  state  aid,  81 
celebration  at  Dunkirk,  100 
change  of  gauge,  101 
chartered,  79 
completion  celebrated,  95 
connections  forbidden,  101 
contemporaneous  tribute  to,  107 
continued  West,  108 
cost  of,  to  Dunkirk,  105 
deplorable  condition  of,  101 
difficulties  in  raising  money,  84 
flag  presentations,  99 
finished  to  Dunkirk,  94 
first  iron  bridges,  93 
first  passenger  train,  83 
first  president,  80 
forced  to  change  eastern  termi- 
nus, 102 
grading,  83 

great  Genesee  bridge,  94 
ground  broken  for,  81 
hampered  by  politicians,  79 
last  spike,  94 
learns  to  issue  bonds,  94 
opened  to  Goshen,  83 
origin  of,  76 

opening  revolutionizes  travel,  106 
plans  for  state  to  build,  83 
public  meetings  to  discuss,  78 
remarkable   fast  run  on,  98 
riots  on,  91 

stockholders  ruined,  81 
subscription  plan  to  build,  82 
surveys  begun,  80 
syndicate  construction,  93 
termini,  80 

victimized  by  farmers,  90 
wrecks  numerous,  101 
Excitement  over  first  train,  160 
Excursions,  cheap,  first  organized, 

231 

Excursion  to  Washington,  56 
Expensive  construction,  305 
Experimental  railroad  in  1809,  113 
Explosion  of  the  Best  Friend,  25 
Extraordinary  episode  at  Erie,  214 
Evans,  Oliver,  3,  7 

Fare  limited  to  one  cent  a  mile, 

115 

Fares,  early,  138,  182 
Fargo,  W.  G.,  162 


Farmers  blockade  railroads,  122 
Farmers  let  stock  be  killed,  210 
Farmers  stone  trains,  211 
Featherstonhaugh,  Geo.  W.,  157 
Fiat  railroads,  189 
Fillmore,  President,  95 
Fire,  great  New  York,  81 
First    bridge    across    Mississippi, 

224 

freight   conductor,   163 
impressions  of  railroads,  30,  63, 

75 

locomotive  explosion,  25 
man  killed  asleep  on  track,  50 
passenger  service,  25 
private  car  lines,  120 
Pullman  car,  172 
railroad  meeting  in  Ohio,  218 
telegraphic  train  order,  103 
trip  by  a  locomotive  in  America, 

20 

trip  of  a  Pullman  car,  174 
vestibuled  cars,  178 
wheat  shipped  to  Chicago,  200 
woman  to  ride  on  New  Jersey 

R.  R.,  140 

Fisk,  James,  holds  up  Union  Pa- 
cific,  242 

Flags  presented  to  Erie  R.  R.,  99 
Flanges  changed  outside  to  inside, 

41 

Fleming,  Sandford,  286,  297 
"Flurries"  caused  by  snowslides, 

309 

"  Flurry,"  man  killed  by,  309 
Force  used  to  end  railroad  com- 
petition, 224 
Fortifications    built    by    railroads, 

280 

Four  wheeled  truck,  26 
Fourth  of  July  excursion,  famous, 

161 
Freight    conductor,    first    in    New 

York,  163 
Freight,  first  New  York  R.  R.  to 

carry,  162 
Freight,    how    handled    in    early 

days,   194 

Fuel  famine  of  1856-7,  222 
Future  of  Chicago  predicted,  207 

Gauge,  changes  of,  102 
five  feet  recommended,  23,  24 
fixed  by  first  whistle,  222 
six  feet,  68 

broad,      route      New      York-St. 
Louis,  109 

Girard,  Stephen,   114 


INDEX 


319 


Gould,  Jay,  147,  280,  282 

Grade,  discovery  that  locomotive 
can  climb,  128 

"Graduation,"  54 

Graham,  W.  G.,  secretary  of  the 
navy,  95 

Grand  Canyon  of  the  Arkansas 
fortified,  275 

Grand  Canyon,  spectacular  strug- 
gle for,  272 

Grasshopper  raids,  266 

Grasshoppers  stop  trains,  125,  266 

Great  .number  of  railroad  schemes, 
225 

Half  rates  to  ministers,  origin  of, 

86 

"  Hell-on-Wheels,"  247 
Heroes,  passengers  on  first  train 

as,  156 

Heroine  of  the  Central  Pacific,  256 
Hill,  James  J.,  24,  298 
Holliday,  Cyrus  K.,  259,  283 
Hopkins,  Mark,  236 
Horsepower  on   railroads,  23,  30, 

44 
Horses,  frightened  by  first  train, 

155 

prohibited  on  railroads,  124 
substituted  for  locomotives,  224 
Hunt,  Gov.  A.  C.,  277 
Huntington,  C.  P.,  236,  282 

Illinois,  first  railroad  in,  191 
Illinois  Central,  196 
Imlay,  Richard,  52 
Impressions,  first,  of  railroads,  30, 

63,  75 

Inclined  planes,  127,  134 
Indians,  atrocities,  245 

cost  per  head  to  kill,  258 

declare  war,  243 

hunt,  a  favorite  joke,  263 

learn  to  wreck  trains,  246 

to  exterminate  whites,  244 

drive  Dodge  to  find  pass,  243 

help  in  surveys,  288 
Internal     improvements,     Illinois, 
189 

Indiana,  203 

Michigan,  203 

Pennsylvania,  117 
Iron  Bridges,  first,  93 
Irving,    Washington,    misses    ex- 
cursion, 69 

James,  J.  H.,  221 
Jarvis,  E.  W.,  290 


Jealousy    of    Pennsylvania    cities, 

108 

Jervis,  J.  B.,  12,  151 
Joy,  James  F.,  205 
Judah,  Mrs.  T.  D.,  235 
Judah,  Theodore  D.,  234 

Kent,  Marvin,  108 

Kentucky,  first  railroad  in,  223 

Kidnapping  of  public  officials,  280 

King,  J.  G.,  81 

Krudener,  Baron,  43 

Land  grants,  196 

to  A.,  T.  &  S.  F.,  261 

to  Canadian  Pacific,  298 

to  Illinois  Central,  196 

to  Pacific  railroads,  241 
Last  spike,  Canadian  Pacific,  312 

Erie,  94 

first    transcontinental    railroad, 
256 

cost  of,  312 
Latrobe,  B.  H.,  54,  61 
Law  and  order  maintained,  302 
Lawlessness,  248,  261 
Lazenby,  Mrs.  C.  E.,  diverts  rail- 
road, 191 

Lease,  D.  and  R.  G.,  canceled,  281 
Legislation  to  prohibit  competition, 

181 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  208,  224 
Litchfield,  E.  C.,  205 
Lobby,  at  Albany,  159 

holds  up  railroads,  108 

railroad,  hottest  fight  by,  208 
Locomotive,  climbs  grades,  128 

first  advocated,  23 

first  built  in  America,  24 

first  explosion,  25 

first  in  America,  12,  19,  22 

first  in  Illinois,  192 

first  order  for,  12,  19 

first  trip  by  American  built,  46 

first  trip  in  America,  20 

first  with  a  whistle,  221 

Peter  Cooper's,  45 

prize  for  best,  48 

trailed  by  hunters,  194 

with  horizontal  drivers,  133 
Locomotives,     individual,      *'  Best 
Friend  of  Charleston,"   76 

"  Black  Hawk,"  119 

"De  Witt  Clinton,"  151 

"Howe,"   167 

"Hoodoo,"  167 

"John  Bull,"  140 

"  Jupiter,"  256 


INDEX 


Locomotives: 

"Old  Ironsides,"  115 

"  Pioneer,"  199 

"  Robert  Fulton,"  153 

"Rocket,"  47 

"Stourbridge  Lion,"  20,  22 

"  Syracuse,"   162 

"Tom  Thumb,"  46 

"Washington,"  128 

"West  Point,"  26 

"  William  Cooke,"  57 

"Wyoming,"  16T 

"York,"  49 
Locomotives,  "Camels,"  61 

English,  worthless,  153 

purchased  by  Pennsylvania,  121 

to  burn  soft  coal,  201 
Loder,  Benjamin,  96 
Lord,  Eleazer,  76,  79 


Macdonald,  Sir  John,  298 
Mail  transportation,  begun,  56 
Mania,  internal  improvement,  203 
"Marriage  Act,"  of  1831,  140 
Mason,  Roswell  B.,  196 
Mason,  S.  T.,  204 
Massachusetts,  transportation  sys- 
tem, 27 

"  Master  of  transportation,"  150 
Masterson,  Bat,  278 
Mattison,  Joel,  195 
Meigs,  Henry,  8 
Mennonites    brought    to    Kansas, 

265 
Michigan  Southern,  first  train  into 

Chicago,  209 
Militia     to     stop     railroad     riots, 

55 

Miller,  E.  L.,  24 
Ministers,  origin  of  half  rates  to, 

86 
Minot,    Supt.    Charles,    first   train 

order,  104 
Mob,  breaks  up  railroad  meeting, 

229 

tears  up  track,  216 
"  Model  Road,"  the,  222 
Monopoly    feared   by   the  people, 

120 

Moore,  James,  117 
Morgan,  Richard  P.,  193 
Morley,  W.  R.,  273 
Murat,  Mme.,  140 
McHenry,  James,  109 
McLane,  Lewis,  58 
McMahon,  J.  V.  L.,  38,  42 
McMurtrie,  J.  H.,  271 


Newington,  Conn.,  protests  against 
railroads,  11 

New  route  between  east  and  west, 
106 

New  York  aid  to  railroads,  157 
gets  railroad  fever,  156 
-St.  Louis,  through  route,  66 

News  carrying,  fast,  56 

Nickerson,  Thomas,  257 

Norris,  William,  128 

Obstacles,    struggle   with    natural, 

308 

Ogden,  W.  B.,  198,  206 
Ogle,  Gen.  Alexander,  111 
Ohio  in  a  hurry  for  railroads,  218 
Operation,  railroad,  30,  43,  50,  120, 
135,  145,  162,  167,  193,  204, 
214,  222 

Opposition  to  railroads  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, 111 

Oratory  in  great  vogue,  71 
Origin  of  bell  cord,  84 
of  half  rates  to  ministers,  86 
Pullman  cars,  171 
pass  system,  142 
ticket  punch,  88 

Palmer,  Gen.  W.  J.,  273 

Panic  of  1857,  202 

Pass,  Evans,  251 

Passenger  service,  first,  25 

Passengers,  profit  on  transfer  of, 
159 

Passengers  walk  home,  193,  224 

Passes  become  an  intolerable  evil, 

169 
origin  of,  142 

Patapsco  bridge,  54 

Pennsylvania     opposes     railroads, 
111 

Pennsylvania  railroad,  buys  State 

railroads,  147 
extension  westward,  147 
first  to  use  airbrake,  149 
first  block  signal  system,  149 
first   steel   rails,   149 
great  service  to  nation,  147 
leases  New  Jersey  lines,  147 
organized,  144 

Perham,  Josiah,  230 

Persecution  threatens  ruin  of  rail- 
road, 212 

Peter,  T.  J.,  260 

Pierson,  Jeremiah,  76 

Pierson,  Mrs.  H.  L.,  75 

Pile  construction,  160,  219 

Planes,  inclined,  127,  134 


INDEX 


321 


Plumbe,  John,  227 

"Plunder  Law,"  219 

Politics,  79,  142,  210,  285 

Popular  excursions,  origin  of,  231 

Portage  Railroad,  144 

Post  roads,  4 

Poverty,  Michigan  Southern,  213 

President   Fillmore,  at   Erie  cele- 
bration, 95 

Van    Buren,    rides    on   railroad, 
161 

Private  car  lines,  first,  120 

Profitable  railroad,  214 

Public  eager  for  railroads,  39 

Pullman,  George  M.,  171 

Pullman,   sleeping  car,   origin   of, 
171 

Punch,  ticket,  origin  of,  88 

Quarrels  ruin  a  railroad,  220 

Race,    horse    against    locomotive, 

273 

for  Raton  Pass,  271 
Raids  of  ex-Gov.  Hunt,  277 
Rail   making,   early,   at   Scranton, 

92 

Railroad,  aid  in  New  York,  157 
at  auction,  186 

bridge  not  an  obstacle  to  navi- 
gation, 225 

building  by  statute,  189 
building,  remarkable,  219 
consolidation,  first  important,  181 
conspirators  confess,  212 
demonstration,  43 
development,   origin   of   modern 

methods,  265 
fever  in  New  York,  156 
first  bridal  trip  on,  75 
first  east  from  Cleveland,  213 
first  operated  in  Ohio,  220 
first  man  killed  sleeping  on,  50 
first  west  of  Alleghenies,  188 
how  it  impressed  early  travelers, 

63 

"in  actual  operation,"  193 
opening  of  the  first  Illinois,  192 
operation,  early,  30,  43,  50,  120, 

135,  145,  162,  167,  199,  204, 

214,  222 

organization  in  the  west,  225 
remonstrances  against,  11 
schemes,  early,  188 
torn  up  by  farmers,  194 
to  Washington,  53 
travel  extraordinary,  169 
trip  in  1832,  30 


Railroads,     individual,     Allegheny 

Portage,  127 
Atchison,  Topeka  and  Santa  Fe, 

259 
Atlantic     and     Great    Western, 

109 

Atlantic  and  Pacific,  206,  282 
Auburn  and  Syracuse,  162 
Baltimore  and  Ohio,  33 
Baltimore  and  Washington,  53 
Boston  and  Lowell,  27 
Boston  and  Providence,  29 
Boston  and  Worcester,  8 
Buifalo  and  Erie,  218 
Buffalo  and  State  Line,  218 
Camden  and  Amboy,  139 
Canadian-Pacific,  284 
Central  Pacific,  237 
Charleston  and  Hamburg,  22 
Chicago  and  Alton,  172 
Cincinnati   and   Indianapolis,   67 
Chicago  and  Northwestern,  202, 

244 

Chicago  and  Vincennes,  190 
Chicago,   Rock   Island   and   Pa- 
cific, 202,  282 
Chicago,  St.  Paul  and  Fond  du 

Lac,  202 

Cincinnati,   Hamilton  and  Day- 
ton, 109 
Cleveland,  Columbus,  Cincinnati 

and  St.  Louis,  222 
Cleveland,  Painesville  and  Ash- 
tabula,  218 

Cumberland  Valley,  141 
Denver  and  Rio  Grande,  269 
Detroit  and  St.  Joseph,  203 
Erie,  The,  75 

Erie  and  Kalamazoo,  203,  209 
Erie  and  Northeast,  214 
Franklin  and  Warren,  108 
Galena  and  Chicago  Union,  172, 

197 

Great  Western,  195 
Hudson  River,  180,  182 
Illinois  Central,  195 
Lake     Erie,    Wabash    and     St. 

Louis,  195 

Lexington  and  Ohio  River,  223 
Little  Miami,  222 
Mad  River  and  Lake  Erie,  220 
Marietta  and  Cincinnati,  66 
Mauch  Chunk,  14 
Michigan  Central,  197 
Michigan  Southern  and  Northern 

Indiana,  218 

Mississippi  and  Missouri,  240 
Missouri  Pacific,  233,  282 


INDEX 


Railroads : 

Mohawk  and  Hudson,  151,  157, 
185 

New  York  and  Harlem,  180,  182 

New  Jersey,  141 

New  York  Central,  181,  183,  184 

Northern  Cross,  186 

Northern  Indiana,  207 

Northern  Pacific,  232 

Ohio  and  Mississippi,  66,  109 

Ohio,  The,  219 

Painesville,  Ashtabula  and  Gene- 
va, 214 

Paterson  and  Hudson,  29,  102 

Pennsylvania,  The,  144 

People's   Pacific,   232 

Philadelphia  and  Columbia,  118, 
119 

Philadelphia,    Germantown    and 
Norristown,  114 

Pittsburg  and  Erie,  108 

Pittsburg,  Ft.  Wayne  and  Chi- 
cago, 148 

Quincy  Granite,  13 

Ramapo  and  Paterson,  102 

Rochester  and  Niagara  Falls,  234 

Sacramento  Valley,  234 

St.  Louis  and  San  Francisco,  282 

Southern  Pacific,  270 

Syracuse  and  Utica,  159 

Toledo  and  Illinois  River,  195 

Union  Pacific,  240 

Wabash,  The,  188,  195 

Winchester  and  Potomac,  52 
Railroads,  as  competitors  of  Erie 
Canal,  180 

as  toll  roads,  50 

as  turnpikes,  120 

early  methods  of  construction,  41 

earliest  predictions  concerning,  7 

fantastic  objections  to,  10 

fiat,  189 

first  in  Illinois,  191 

France  studies  American,  31 

great  number  of  early,  68 

horses  prohibited  on,  124 

no  right  to  compete  with  canal, 
181 

not  built  by  capitalists,  9 

opposition  to,  8 

supremacy  of  American,  31 

that  levied  war,  259 

to  compete  with  steamers,  213 
Rail  route,  Buffalo-Cleveland,  com- 
pleted, 214 
Railway,     great     celebrations     of 

1857,  68 
Rapid  growth  of  railroads,  225 


Raton,  pass,  271 
Redfield,  W.  C.,  77 
Remarkable  railroad  building,  219 
Reorganization  of  New  York  Cen- 
tral, 185 

"  Revolver  train,"  134 
Rewards  for  engineers,  297 
Ridgley,  N.  H.,  186,  195 
Ridicule  for  railroad  builders,  9 
Rifles  for  railroad  builders,  280 
Rio    Grande    River,    troublesome, 

281 

Rio  Grande  war,  277 
Riots  at  Erie,  Penn.,  216 

on  Baltimore  and  Ohio,  54 

on  Erie  Railroad,  91 
"  Rippers,"  217 
Roberts,  S.  W.,  137 
Robinson,  A.  A.,  271 
Robinson,  Moncure,  227 
Roebling,  John  A.,  135 
Rogers,  Major,  297 
Romeyn,  Theodore,  204 
Roumfort,  Gen.  A.  L.,  144 
Route,    New   York-St.    Louis,    66, 

106,  109 
Russian  railroads,  origin  of,  44 

Safety  chains,  origin  of,  125 
Sailing  car,  23,  43 
St.  Louis,  celebration  at,  71 
Sample   railroad  rides,   161 
Sand  box,  origin  of,  126 
San  Francisco,  celebration  at,  257 
Sargent,  A.  A.,  237 
Sargent,  J.  W.,  222 
Scandal  over  transcontinental  rail- 
road, 258 
Schemes,    railroad,    great    number 

of,  225 

Schmidt,  C.  B.,  265 
Scott,  Thomas  A.,  146 
Scranton,  G.  W.,  92 
Scranton,  Penn.,  founded,  92 
Second-hand  material    for   Illinois 

roads,  199 

Sectional  boats  on  railroads,  139 
Sensation  caused  by  first  train  in 

N.  Y.,  155 
Sensation  caused  by  Pullman  car, 

175 

Settling  Kansas,  165 
Seward,  W.  H.,  213 
"Shanghais,"  217 
Sheffield    &    Farnam,    contractors, 

202 
Shops,  first  R.  R.  in  Pennsylvania, 

125 


INDEX 


Siege  of  Pueblo,  278 

Singular    experience   of    Michigan 

Central,  210 

Smith,  Donald,  298,  312 
"  Snakeheads,"  165 
Snow   ends   an   experimental  trip, 

223 

Snowshoes,  surveying  on,  292 
Snowslides,  293,  294,  308 
Snow  in  the  Sierras,  250 
Snowstorm  stops  "  Pleasure  "  cars, 

193 

Special  trains  on  B.  and  O.,  69 
Spectacular   railroad  construction, 

299 

Speed,  average,  in  1853,  182 
Spike,   last,   on   Canadian   Pacific, 

312 

on  transcontinental  line,  256 
Stage     companies     stop     railroad 

competition,  224 
Stagecoach,  fast  trips,  3 
Stanford,  Leland,  236 
State  railroads  a  failure,  142 
Station,  first,  in  New  York  City, 

180 

"Steam  motive  power,"  223 
Stephen,  George,  298 
Stevens,  Col.  John,  7,  114 
Stevens,  Thaddeus,  121,  137,  143 
Stock  herded  on  track  to  be  killed, 

210 

Storms  in  the  Sierras,  250 
Strange    home    market    for    stock, 

210 

Strong,  Wm.  B.,  268 
Struggle  for  Grand  Canyon,  272 
Strowbridge,  Mrs.  S.  W.,  256 
Stryker,  John,  205 
Subscriptions    for    railroad    stock, 

39 

Surveying,  on  snowshoes,  292 
Swann,  Thomas,  60 
Switchback,  first,  63 
Switching  with  horses,  163 
Syndicate  construction,  origin  of, 

93 


Tariif,  freight,  by  wagon,  4 
Taverns  in  stagecoach  days,  112 
Teamsters,  railroad,  hard  to  man- 
age, 136 
Telegraph,  incredulity  concerning, 

6 

Telegraphic  train  order,  first,  103 
Telescope    in    railroad    operation, 
201 


Temperance  on  railroad,  beginning 

of,  54 

Thomas,  Evan,  43 
Thomas,  P.  E.,  34 
Thomson,  John,  experimental  rail- 
road, 113 

Thomson,  J.  Edgar,  113,  118,  144 
Threat  to  kill  passengers,  211 

to  tear  up  track,  223 
Throop,  Gov.,  advocates  railroads, 

158 
Through   ticket   introduced   in   N. 

Y.,   169 

Ticket  punch,  origin  of,  88 
Tolls,  on  Pennsylvania  State  rail- 
roads, 120 

on  railroad  traffic,  181 
Toughest  towns,  261 
Touzalin,  A.  E.,  265 
Track    across   Muskeg,   waves    in, 
307 

will  not  keep  still,  308 
Tracklaying,  contest,  254 

how  done,  301 

world's  record,  254 
Traffic,  early  emigrant,  166 

extraordinary,  under  difficulties, 
223 

heavy,  in  early  days,  166 

heavy,  into  Chicago,  201 

jealousy  over,   108 

over  the  Alleghenies,  33,  37 

profitable,  early,  182 

under  difficulties,  214 
Train,  first  in  New  York,  150 

in  Pennsylvania,   115 

from  Utica,  excitement  over,  160 
Trains,  stoned  by   farmers,  211 

uncertainty  of  early,  169 
Transcontinental  railroad,  first,  226 

a  subject  of  deification,  233 

bill   for,  becomes  law,  237 

building  described,  252 

California  aid  for,  238 

Congressional  oratory  over,  233 

curbs  Indian  atrocities,  258 

first  attempt  to  build,  232 

first  memorial  for,  228 

first  promoters,  228 

first  proposed,  227 

first  public  meeting,  227 

growth  of  the  idea,  233 

joy  over  completion,  257 

last  spike,  256 

pass,  through  Sierras,  236 

prodigies  in  construction,  251 

progress  in  building,  251 

building  army,  252 


324 


INDEX 


Transcontinental  Railroad : 

rivalry  for  eastern  terminus,  233 
San  Francisco  refuses  funds  for, 

236 

subsidy  for,  doubled,  241 
survey  begun  by  T.  D.  Judah,  235 
T.  D.   Judah  the  authority   on, 

235 

the  man  to  build,  234 
Whitney  plans  defeated,  229 

Transporters,  individual,  47,  135 

Travel,  difficulties  of,  in  New  York, 

179 

extraordinary,  169 
new  route  revolutionizes,  106 
New  York-Chicago,  time  of,  210 
New  York-Philadelphia,   141 
Pittsburg-Philadelphia,  138 
swamps  early  railroads,   170 
vicissitudes  of  early,  123,  168 

Treaty  of  Boston,  281 

Trial  trip,  Best  Friend,  24 

Turner,  John  B.,  201 

Truck,    four     wheeled,    litigation 
over,  26 

Tunnel,  Board  Tree,  63 
Kingwood,  62 
Raton,  272 

Turnpike,  National,  4 

Uncertainty  of  trains,  early,  169 
Uniforms,    on    Pennsylvania    rail- 
road, 145 
Union  Pacific,  a  financial  outcast, 

241 
desperate     struggle    to     raise 

money  for,  239 

Dodge,  G.  M.,  finds  pass  for,  244 
foes  of,  242 

forced  to  sell  material,  241 
ground  broken  for,  240 
Indians  cause  great  trouble,  244 
laborers  demand  pay  in  advance, 

243 

organized,  240 
prey  of  plunderers,  242 
tremendous   obstacles,   243 
tribulations  of,  240 
Unique  railroad  war,  214 


Van  Buren,  President,  ride  on  a 

railroad,  161 

Vanderbilt,  Cornelius,  182 
Vanderbilt,  system,  185 
Van  Home,  W.  C.,  299,  312 
Van  Rensselaer,  Stephen,  157 
Vestibules  introduced,  178 
Vestibuled   train,    first,    exhibited, 

179 
Volunteers  punish   Indians,  247 


Wages,  railroad,  in  1837,  191 

Wages      on      Portage      Railroad, 
135 

Walkem,  Premier,  G.  A.,  286 

Watchmakers,  as  locomotive  build- 
ers, 115 

Wagoners    end    railroad    competi- 
tion, 224 

War,  Rio  Grande,  277 

Washouts,  trouble  A.  T.  and  S.  F., 
281 

Webster,  Daniel,  13,  95 

Weitbrec,  R.  F.,  278 

Well  as  a  jail,  262 

West  Point  foundry,  24,  26 

Wheat,  first  shipment  to  Chicago, 
200 

Wheat,  early  rate  on,  in  Michigan, 
204 

Whistle,  first  locomotive,  effect  of, 
221 

Whiskey  causes  riots,  54 

Whitney,  Asa,  228 

Williams,  Cyrus,  219 

Williams,  Uncle  Nat,  first  freight 
conductor,  163 

Wilderness,  perils  of,  287 
transporting  supplies  in,  304 

Winans,  Ross,  40,  49,  52,  61 

Woman,    first,    to    ride    on    New 
Jersey  road,  140 

Wooden  bridge,  famous,  94 

Worcester,     railroad     celebration, 
8 

Wreck     on     early     iron     bridge, 

93 
of  an  unlucky  locomotive,  167 


McPherson's  Freight  Tariffs  and  Traffic 

An  Elementary  Study  of  the  Freight  Rates  of  the  Railroads  of  the 

United  States  in  their  Economic  Relations, 

By  LOGAN  G.  MCPHERSON,  author  of  "  The  Working  of  the 
Railroads."  8vo.  With  maps,  tables,  and  a  full  index.  Probable 
price,  $2.00  net. 

While  the  author's  earlier  book  is,  in  a  sense,  a  primer  of  rail- 
road organization;  this  study  of  the  freight  rate  structure  is  so 
comprehensive  and  thorough  as  to  be  exceedingly  valuable  to  any 
one  having  to  do  with  railroad  freight  traffic  either  as  a  railroad 
official  or  as  a  large  shipper.  For  younger  men  it  is  the  only 
means  of  knowing  how  the  present  system  has  been  evolved. 

The  contents  include:— The  Channels  of  Traffic  ;  The  Prepara- 
tion of  Foodstuffs ;  The  Distribution  of  Foodstuffs  ;  The  Dis- 
tribution of  Raw  Material  and  Merchandise  ;  The  Transportation 
Charge  and  Prices  ;  The  Regional  Rate  Structures  ;  Commodity 
Rate  Structures;  Early  Tariffs  and  Classifications;  Early  Rivalries 
and  the  Beginnings  of  the  Through  Service,  Rate  Wars,  and 
Traffic  Agreements ;  Secondary  Freight  Services ;  Incidental 
Developments  of  the  Freight  Service;  The  Freight  Traffic  Depart- 
ment of  Railroad  Administration ;  The  Basis  for  the  Transportation 
Charge;  Public  Sentiment  and  the  Hepburn  Bill  ;  The  Influence 
of  the  Commission  toward  Uniformity  of  Procedure  ;  Traffic 
Experts  in  the  Employ  of  Shippers;  The  Commerce  of  the  Cities; 
The  Comparison  of  the  Railroads  with  the  Agricultural  and 
Manufacturing  Industries;  The  Progressive  Achievement  of  the 
Railroads ;  Summary. 

McPherson's  The  Working  of  the  Railroads 

By  LOGAN  G.  MCPHERSON,  Lecturer  on  Transportation  at 
Johns  Hopkins.  12mo.  $1.50  net,  by  mail  $1.63. 

"  Simply  and  lucidly  tells  what  a  railroad  company  is,  what  it 
does,  and  how  it  does  it.  Cannot  fail  to  be  of  use  to  the  voter.  Of 
exceeding  value  to  the  young  and  ambitious  in  railroad  service." 
— The  Travelers'  Official  Railway  Guide. 

"  The  most  important  contribution  to  its  branch  of  the  subject 
that  has  yet  been  made."—  The  Dial. 

"  The  author's  connection  with  practical  service  gives  this  a 
value  which  no  other  book  quite  equals.  Up-to-date,  informing, 
.  .  .  an  excellent  piece  of  work." — Wall  Street  Journal. 


HENRY    HOLT    AND     COMPANY 

Publishers  New  York 


Hmerican  public 

EDITED  BY 

RALPH    CURTIS     RINGWALT 

IMMIGRATION  :     And    Its    Effects 
Upon  the  United  States 

By  PRESCOTT  F.  HALL,  A.B.,  LL.B.,  Secretary  of 
the  Immigration  Restriction  League.  393  pp.  $1.50 
net.  By  mail,  $1.65. 

*'  Should  prove  interesting  to  everyone.  Very  readable,  forceful 
and  convincing.  Mr.  Hall  considers  every  possible  phase  of  this 
great  question  and  does  it  in  a  masterly  way  that  shows  not  only 
that  he  thoroughly  understands  it,  but  that  he  is  deeply  interested  in 
it  and  has  studied  everything  bearing  upon  it." — Boston  Transcript. 

"A  readable  work  containing  a  vast  amount  of  valuable  informa- 
tion. Especially  to  be  commended  is  the  discussion  of  the  racial 
effects.  As  a  trustworthy  general  guide  it  should  prove  a  god- 
send."—^. F.  Evening  Post. 

"Earnest  and  unprejudiced.  .  .  .  Cannpt  fail  to  be  of  great 
assistance  in  clarifying  and  setting  on  a  solid  foundation  the  ideas 
of  people  who  are  now  becoming  convinced  that  the  problems  of 
immigration  in  the  nation  and  the  municipality  will  soon  reach  a 
more  acute  stage  than  ever  before."— Philadelphia  Press. 

"An  auspicious  omen  of  the  worth  of  Messrs.  Henry  Holt  and 
Company's  recently  announced  series  on  American  Public  Prob- 
lems. ...  Mr.  Hall  has  been  in  close  touch  with  the  immigration 
movement  and  he  writes  with  a  grasp  and  a  fullness  of  information 
which  must  commend  his  work  to  every  reader.  ...  A  handbook 
...  to  which  one  may  turn  conveniently  for  information  for  which 
he  would  otherwise  be  obliged  to  search  through  many  a  dusty 
document."— The  World  To-day. 

THE  ELECTION   OF   SENATORS 

By  Professor  GEORGE  H.  HAYNES,  Author  of  "  Rep- 
resentation in  State  Legislatures."  300  pp.  $1.50 
net.  By  mail  $1.65. 

Shows  the  historical  reasons  for  the  present  method,  and 
its  effect  on  the  senate  and  senators,  and  on  state  and 
local  government,  with  a  detailed  review  of  the  arguments 
for  and  against  direct  election. 

"A  timely  book.  .  .  .  Prof.  Haynes  is  qualified  for  a  historical 
and  analytical  treatise  on  the  subject  of  the  Senate." 

— N.  Y.  Evening  Sun. 

"  Well  worth  reading,  and  unique  because  it  is  devoted  wholly 
to  the  election  of  senators  and  to  the  deliberations  of  the  Senate." 

—Boston  Transcript. 

"Able  and  dispassionate,  and  ought  to  be  widely  read." 

—New  York  Commercial. 

"Of  considerable  popular  as  well  as  historical  interest."— Dial. 

Henry      Holt      and      Company 

29  WEST  23o  STREET  NEW  YORK 


TWO    BOOKS     ON    VITAL    QUESTIONS 
FOR    THOUGHTFUL    AMERICANS 

THE  NEGRO  AND  THE  NATION 

By  GEORGE  S.  MERRIAM 

Probably  the  first  complete  history  of  the  negro  in  his 
relation  to  our  politics,  sd printing  436pp.  $1.75  net. 
By  mail  $1.92. 

The  Rev.  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE  in  "Lend  a  Hand":  "Sensi- 
ble people  who  wish  to  know,  who  wish  to  form  good  sound  opinions, 
and  especially  those  who  wish  to  take  their  hottest  part  in  the  great 
duties  of  the  hour,  will  read  the  book,  will  study  it,  and  will  find  noth- 
ing else  better  worth  reading  and  study." 

"Admirable,  exactly  the  sort  of  book  needed.  .  ..  Enlightened  and 
persuasive  discussion  of  the  negro  problem  in  its  present  phases  and 
aspects.  Not  a  dry  history.  Human,  dramatic,  interesting,  absorb- 
ing, there  is  philosophy  ot  national  and  political  life  back  of  it — a 
philosophy  which  not  only  furnished  interpretation  of  past  events, 
but  offers  guidance  for  the  future.  .  .  .  Impartial  and  informing.  .  .  . 
There  is  much  that  tempts  quotation.  .  .  .  Mr.  Merriam  has  given 
us  an  excellent,  high-minded,  illuminating  book  on  the  problem  of 
the  American  negro." — Chicago  Record-Hetald. 

"A  deeply  interesting  story.  .  .  .  An  exceedingly  readable  vol- 
ume, especially  valuable  in  its  analyses  of  conditions,  causes,  situa- 
tions and  results;  and  against  his  main  conclusions  no  sane  person 
can  contend." — Boston  Transcript. 

STUDIES   IN 
AMERICAN   TRADE-UNIONISM 

J.    H.    HOLLANDER    and  G.   E.    BARNETT    (Editors) 

Twelve  papers  by  graduate  students  and  officers  of 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  the  results  of  original  investiga- 
tions of  representative  Trade  Unions.  There  are  also 
chapters  on  Employers'  Associations,  the  Knights  of 
Labor,  and  the  American  Federation  of  Labor.  (380  pp., 
8vo,  #2.75  net.  By  mail,  $2.98.) 

"A  study  of  trade-unions  in  the  concrete.  Impartial  and  thor- 
ough .  .  .  expertly  written.' — New  York  Ttmes  Review. 

"Though  confined  to  particular  features  of  particular  trade 
unions,  the  data  dealt  with  are  comprehensive  and  typical  ;  so  that 
the  result  is  a  substantial  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  trade- 
union  structure  and  functions.  .  .  Excellent  studies." 

— New  York  Evening  Post. 

"  It  is  doubtful  if  anything  approaching  it  in  breadth  and  co-ordi- 
nation has  yet  found  its  way  into  print.  ...  A  very  useful  book." 

— San  Francisco  Chrtniclt. 

Henry     Holt     and     Company 

34  W.  330  STREET  (v,  '06)  NEW  YORK 


AMERICAN     FOREIGN     POLICY 
OUR    PHILIPPINE    PROBLEM 

By  Prof.  HENRY  PARKER  WILLIS 
A   study  of  American   Colonial  Policy,     ismo,  $1.50  net 

(By  mail,  $1.64) 

A  book  of  vital  interest,  based  on  personal  investiga- 
tion in  the  Philippines  by  a  former  editorial  writer  of  the 
New  York  Evening  Post,  who  was  also  Washington 
correspondent  of  the  New  York  Journal  of  Commerce 
and  Springfield  Republican,  and  is  now  a  professor  in 
Washington  and  Lee  University. 

"Anyone  desiring  to  inform  himself  fully  as  to  the  history,  pol- 
itics, public  questions,  in  short,  everything  dealing  with  the  subject 
of  American  control  of  the  Philippines  from  the  day  Dewey  entered 
Manila  harbor  to  the  present,  will  find  Mr.  Willis's  work  a  most  im- 
portant book.  ...  He  writes  of  the  Filipinos  as  he  found  them,  and 
with  the  knack  of  the  true  investigator,  has  avoided  falling  in  with 
the  political  views  of  any  party  or  faction.  More  valuable  still  is  his 
exposition  of  the  Philippine  question  in  its  bearings  on  American 
life  and  politics.  A  most  exhaustive,  careful,  honest  and  unbiased 
review  of  every  phase  of  the  question." — The  Washington  Post. 

"A  keen,  exhaustive  and  merciless  criticism  of  the  whole  Philip, 
pine  experiment.  .  .  .  His  unsparing  analysis  of  all  the  departments 
of  Philippine  government  must  (however)  command  respect  as  able, 
honest  and  sincere  ...  no  other  book  contains  more  solid  truth,  or 
a  greater  section  of  the  truth." — Springfield  Republican. 

AMERICA,  ASIA    AND    THE 
PACIFIC 

By  WOLF  VON  SCHIERBRAND 
Author  of  "  Germany  of  To-day  " 

Jonsiders  America's  relations  to  all  the  countries  affected 
V>y  the  Panama  Canal,  to  those  on  both  coasts  of  the 
Pacific,  and  to  the  islands,  besides  analyzing  the  strength 
and  weakness  of  our  rivals.  13  maps,  334  pp.  $1.50  net. 
By  mail,  $1.62. 

"A  most  interesting  treatise  .  .  .  haying  an  important  bearing 
upon  our  future  progress." — Public  Opinion. 

"His  observations  on  the  Panama  Canal  and  the  future  of  the 
Dutch  East  Indies  are  particularly  interesting  and  suggestive." 

— Review  of  Reviews. 

"An  interesting  .  .  .  survey  of  a  broad  field  .  .  .  contains  a  great 
variety  of  useful  information  .  .  .  especially  valuable  to  American 
exporters.1'— Outlook. 

Henry     Holt     and     Company 

34  W.  330  STREET  (v,  '06)  NEW  YORK 


AMERICAN    POLITICAL     HISTORY 

A  POLITICAL   HISTORY  OF   THE 
STATE  OF  NEW  YORK 

By  the  HON.  DEALVA  STANWOOD   ALEXANDER 
2  vols.,  8vo.     $5.00  net 

A  history  of  the  movements  of  political  parties  in  the 
Empire  State  from  1777  to  1861,  and  traces  the  causes  of 
factional  divisions  into  "Bucktails"  and  "Clintonians." 
"Hunkers  "and  "Barnburners,"  etc.  If  upon  any  special 
feature,  emphasis  has  been  placed  on  the  astute  methods 
and  sources  of  power  by  which  the  brilliant  leaders,  George 
Clinton,  Hamilton,  Burr,  De  Witt  Clinton,  Van  Buren,  Sey- 
mour and  Thurlow  Weed,  each  successively  controlled  the 
political  destiny  of  the  State. 

A  POLITICAL   HISTORY  OF   THE 
UNITED    STATES 

By   J.    P.    GORDY 

4  vols.     I2mo.     $1.75  net,  per  vol.     (By  mail,  $1.89.) 
VOLUME  I.,   1787-1809 

A  well-rounded  history  of  the  Federal  period. 

"May  be  read  by  almost  anybody,  with  profit.  Written  in  a  clear 
and  simple  style,  entirely  non-partisan,  and  makes  the  causes  of 
early  party  struggles  much  clearer  than  many  a  more  elaborate 
account/' — Nation. 

VOLUME  II.,  1809-1828 

Much  attention  is  paid  to  the  financial  aspect  of  the 
War  of  1812,  and  to  the  curiously  similar  attitude  of  the 
North  and  the  South  toward  the  negro  in  those  early  years. 

"Succinct and  striking  biographical  sketches  are  now  and  then 
encountered  .  .  .  This  admirable  work."— Ntw  York  Sun. 

VOLUMES  III.  AND  IV.  (In  preparation} 

HISTORY   OF    AMERICAN 
POLITICS 

By  ALEXANDER  JOHNSTON  i6mo,  90  cents 

"  The  most  useful  book  alike  for  teachers  and  for  pupils  is  John, 
ston's  'American  Politics.'— John  Fiske's  '•''Civil  Government  of  tht 
United  States.'* 

Henry     Holt     and     Company 

34  W.  33D  STREET  <y.  '06)  NEW  YORK 


CANADIAN  TYPES  OF  THE  OLD 
REGIME 

By  CHARLES  W.  COLBY,  Professor  of  History 
in  McGill  University.  With  18  illustrations. 
357  PP-  8vo-  $2-75  net- 

A  series  of  papers  that  has  a  peculiar  timeliness  in 
view  of  the  Champlain  celebration.  The  history  of 
French  colonization  is  grouped  around  the  personalities 
of  Champlain,  the  explorer;  Brebeuf,  the  missionary; 
Hebert,  the  colonist ;  D'Iberville,  the  soldier  ;  Talon, 
the  intendant ;  Laval,  the  bishop  ;  Frontenac,  the  gov- 
ernor. There  are  also  chapters  on  the  historical  back- 
ground of  the  subject  and  the  results  of  the  English 
conquest. 

THE    BUILDERS  OF   UNITED 
ITALY 

By  RUPERT  SARGENT  HOLLAND.  With 
eight  portraits.  343  pp.  $2.00  net. 

There  is  no  history  more  alternately  desperate  and 
hopeful  than  that  of  the  scattered  Italian  states  in  their 
efforts  to  form  a  united  nation.  The  men  treated  in 
this  book — Alfieri,  the  Poet ;  Manzoni,  the  Man  of  Let- 
ters; Gioberti,  the  Philosopher  ;  Manin,  the  "Father  of 
Venice";  Mazzini,  the  Prophet ;  Cavour,  the  States- 
man; Garibaldi,  the  Crusader;  Victor  Emmanuel,  the 
King — represent  the  most  potent  forces  in  this  history ; 
and  the  reader  may  follow  history  from  the  interesting 
viewpoints  of  the  great  Italian  patriots  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

If  the  reader  will  send  his  name  and  address,  the  publishers  will 
send  information  about  their  new  books  as  issued. 

HENRY    HOLT     AND    COMPANY 

34  W.  33d  St.  New  York 


